well, that's it for "meet the press daily" tonight. i'll see you at 7:00 p.m. eastern. we'll start on nbc news now. virginia and vermont. the polls close there. apple tv, roku, nbc news.com. syrup tuesday coverage starts right now. >> one day, from california to maine, the biggest delegate jackpot yet. biden's land slide victory in south carolina. shaking up the race. the field dramatically narrowed. >> i am delighted to endorse and support joe biden for president. >> i am ending my campaign and endorsing joe biden for president. >> can biden sweep the south?

>> i'm to get back up. so get up. >> can sanders pull away from the pack? >> the political establishment -- >> for the first time, bloomberg is on the ballot. >> i'm in to it win it. >> and warren is keeping up the fight. >> the time choose is upon us. >> i'm ready to get to work. >> with the delegate race neck in neck. >> will a clear nominee emerge? our political team across the country. plus pulitzer prize winning columnist, eugene robinson, claire mccass kell, the special coverage starts now.

this is biggest night so far. the single largest day on the calendar is possible us. everything in line for 14 states and one american territory head to the polls. 1344 delegates up for grabs today. fully one-third of the number you need to win the nomination. in just one hour's time, the first polls close in virginia and vermont. the latter, have been, the home state of bernie sanders. then it is truly off to the races. down south we go to north carolina at 7:30. then state by state as we work our way west with the time zones all the way to the largest prize of the night, california. we've got our reporters fanned out across this country with. the candidates, bucks again brian williams in new york with rachel maddow. >> the front-runner bernie sanders will be trying to pile up enough delegates for an

insurmountable lead. that seems much more likely for him before the events of the last 72 hours. in the sights of joe biden in south carolina, followed by three of the other democratic contenders dropping out of race. two of them, pete buttigieg and amy klobuchar, then endorsing vp biden last night in person, live in texas. >> then there is what happened over the last 24 hours. biden picked up endorsements from o'rourk, susan rice, to name a few. we saw the effect jim clyburn's endorsement had in south carolinaful will these new endorsements all combined translate into late deciders? into votes in one thing we should know by the end of the night. >> whether mike bloomberg's half a billion dollars earned him any delegates. tonight will be the first time that bloomberg is actually on the ballot anywhere. bloomberg, have been, is just one of the x-factors here.

the other is massachusetts senator elizabeth warren who has signaled that she is in it for the long haul. her campaign signaling her goal stonlt to rack up delegates as many places as she can with the expectation that it will be a brokered convention that fisk nominee at the end of the day in milwaukee this summer. >> we start where we should, at the big board. all eyes are upon it. and steve kornacki with a first look at what's ahead. >> we have exit poll data starting to come in with a sense of what the electorate throughout looks like. the folks going to the polls. there's a lot we can show you. i want to start on this one. last saturday in south carolina, has the number stood out to me. we asked this question. should the next president's policies be a return to barack obama? or a change? or a change? what stood out to me, last

saturday, it was the highest number we had seen in the primary to date. that number was 53 in south carolina. you're seeing, this is the southeast tonight. the number you're seeing in the southeast on this question is 50. that is very close to the number we saw in south carolina over the weekend. that goes to one of the biggest question coming into tonight waffle south carolina a harbinger for joe biden in what was to come in the broader south tonight? that's one of the keys he will need if he will have the kind of night he's hoping for. so take a look. how would that translate? you look at the ma'p. this is southeast region right here. these the states. in exit poll. biden tonight, is he to get south carolina-like numbers, he could start racking up delegates here. that is something very much in question a few days ago. that would be one component he

needs. the story, you mentioned this. before south carolina. everybody in the world assumed in the end, bernie sanders would have a big delegate lead. hundreds of delegates. if biden can run up numbers here, if he can be close about, even in texas. that would be one of the campaign goals. if he can make the viability threshold. we'll hear about that in california. if he can do it in big states like massachusetts, he has chance to be competitive. in race with bernie sanders. if you just think back a week ago, when everybody would have guessed biden was at 300, 400, how big would the lead be after super tuesday? the question a new one. will bernie sanders have the lead after sooupertuesday. >> we've heard so much punditry about the prospects that nobody

will have a majority heading into the convention. that no candidate will have technically locked up the nomination. it might have to be decided at the convention. that expectation, is that at all based on where we are tonight and on what the revised expectations are for tonight? >> that's a question we'll see and it has to do, when i mentioned the viability threshold. this number, 15. every time i show you a result tonight, pay attention to which candidates are above and below 15%. there is an assumption that sanders will probably be over it pretty. everywhere. there is now an assumption that biden will be order it everywhere. when it comes to warren and bloomberg. are they running abover 15 sn%?s if so, they're starting to collect delegates. texas? they can get a lot of delegates.

is warren writtening in massachusetts? she can get a lot of delegates. it will depend on warren and bloomberg at the very least hitting that threshold in a lot of places and being able to collect hundreds of delegates rather than dozens of delegates. >> thank you. >> long lines in dallas, texas, this afternoon where the second biggest delegate haul is tonight. joe biden pulling out all the stops to win texas after the big endorsement derby last night. tonight in houston for us, hey, garrett. >> reporter: hey, brian. we've got long lines here, two and a half hours in harris county. more people live in harris county which includes houston than do iowa and new hampshire combined. to give you an idea of what is

at stake. this is more like texas. this is still a place where would you expect a joe biden or a mike bloomberg to potentially do well. to pick up the suburban voters. folks who are turned off by the trump presidency. anecdotally walking around, hearing from voters. i'm hearing from a lot of folks decide go late. their candidates maybe out or unimpressed with bloomberg. they're going with biden. >> one of the factoids we may return to tonight. harris county, texas, more votes handle the the first two states in this race. >> also the two and a half hour line. it is a factor on all those people sticking it out. are they going to bail? >> that's a commitment.

>> kris jansing at a polling location, where sanders has been making a strong push there. kris? >> reporter: yeah. and it's obviously a blue city in the middle of a red state. so one of the things we've been looking for is how much bernie support would we see. he has lot of good feeling left from four years ago. if there was good turn out, the local experts kept telling me, absolutely going to favor bernie. i talked to them two days later. they said hold on. that might have changed. or least shifted. let me give you the numbers. i just got off the phone. this slinl more than an hour long. back in 2016, 230,000 people total voted early and on day of. it is still two hours to the

busiest time. let me talk on terry religion. how early did you make your decision? >> i made my decision pretty much right when all the candidates announced themselves. it was down about six. >> and it is? >> it is going to be joe biden. the moderate. and the former vice president of the united states of america. >> she is definitely somebody who is on team biden. i talked to 23 people in this line over the last half-hour or so. eight people have changed their mind in the last 24 hours. two are making a game time decision. so exactly what the local experts are telling me, even though you would think these big numbers might lean toward bernie, don't necessarily count on the old ways of thinking holding this time. >> all right. fascinating. late deciders and then some. the spoiler of this night potentially in some of these states could be the man from new york who has already spent northern combined pay roll of

the l.a. dodgers, i learned on our 4:00 broadcast today. mike bloomberg is on the ballot after all the spending and all these tv spots and all this noise for the first time tonight following him is our own josh letterman in west palm, florida. the florida primary two weeks away. >> yeah. intense pressure to bow out of the race. we've been talking on democratic officials. senior people within the party. people who have a lot of influence who have acknowledged they're in touch with the bloomberg campaign trying to make the case that now is the time for the sake of party unity to step aside. particularly the party really coalesced behind joe biden. so far no, indications that will take place. i just spoke to a person close to the campaign who is saying, look, things changed pretty rapidly on south carolina primary day a few days ago.

the bloomberg campaign knew it would be a good night for joe biden. they didn't anticipate that co-resuscitate quite the way he did. so far mike bloomberg has been defiant. we heard from him earlier this morning that miami where he said that he's not taking votes away from joe biden. joe biden is taking votes away from him. he said that his path to the nomination if there is one is through a contested convention. where nobody gets a majority and they duke it out at the convention. he hopes they side with bloomberg. on. >> thank you. >> interesting that they're in florida and not one of the super tuesday states. fascinating to think about. the 15th of march in florida. and bloomberg is doing something, giuliani tried to do this. right?

he tried to start the republican primary campaign this florida. by the time florida was there, he just got steam rollered. nobody has ever double this. but it is striking to matter the bloomberg campaign is experiencing intense pressure from multiple sources inside the democratic party that he needs quit. >> it has been reported and talked about that there is some tension within the bloomberg camp. mike bloomberg himself who said i spent all these millions, a lot of billionaires but even billionaires are persnickety, what's interesting about the bloomberg team is it is the same very skilled, very astute on thatra i have the. they've added our friend tim o'brian who made a calculation not to play in 2015. they seem to be making the opposite calculations about joe biden. in south carolina, he assembled

a larger -- >> why did they decide now? >> they did start late. and they decided they couldn't catch up in the first four states and it wouldn't look good. so aim at super tuesday. meanwhile, carpet bomb the entire nation with a couple, 300, 400 million worth of television advertising. and it was effective. it went from zero to 20 in the polls. what he didn't anticipate was south carolina. and the fact would give such new impetus and new life to the biden campaign. he didn't anticipate jim clyburn and the push he gave to biden. didn't anticipate that overwhelming african-american vote that we may see translate into similar support in these

other states. he thought he would be looking like the strongest moderate come super tuesday and that's not necessarily the case. >> they all go from audacity to hubris. you can't just carpet fwom airwaves and then not when you're stlaanding there in the flesh, perform. >> don't you think that starting in the fifth states. we've seen from whatever it was, 20 to the four or five. it feels like we've lived a thousand lives inside this primary. to say today is day one. >> it was crazy. and then it looked like, gee, maybe it's working. now it's back to no, it was crazy. >> tell fanlt in the room was that biden was suging wind. >> it was predicated on the

trump-giuliani months long smear campaign that couple minute natd what trump think because a good bet. he thinks it was worth getting impeached to muddy up joe biden and his family. bloomberg got in. >> until less handle the 72 hours ago, joe biden was still sucking wind. particularly on fundraising. so one thing that will get tested tonight. bloomberg with all the money in the world. biden running on no money. he has spent nowhere in these states. you can look at i dollar to dollar but ultimately, it is vote to vote. >> what are we? 42:40 away from our first polls close. well within this coming hour. we already have numbers on the breakdown going to the polls. a lot more of the exit polling which may indicate what kind of

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[ dishave you ever wondered [ distant band playing ] what the motorcade driver drives when they're not in a motorcade? [ upbeat music starts ] [ engine revving ] ♪ this one drives a volkswagen passat. ♪ just over 38 minutes to go until our first poll closings of the night. let's speak a little english here. looking at the publicly available data from the

complicate polls first wave tonight, it would certainly indicate we are about to cover a volatile election night in 14 states across the country. more of the numbers coming in to steve kornacki who is at the big boards. >> again, what we saw saturday night. one of the things we saw, if you were watching, you know, the importance of the black vote. last saturday was the first major indication. one thing i can show you demographically, a bunch variables here but there are a bunch of states with significant black voting populations. in virginia, in about 40 minutes, we'll start getting numbers from virginia. 27% of the vote is black. same in north carolina. in tennessee, 26. in alabama, the biggest number of the night. 44. we don't have exit poll data for arkansas but i can tell you in

2016, it was 27. in texas tonight, it is 20. these are states with significant black populations. i want to draw your attention to one other number. this is the black population. in 2016, in his campaign against hillary clinton, did not win a single state where the black population was over 21. that's a bigger number to keep in mind when you look at all these states right here. with the exception of texas. any one of the states according to the exit poll. if sanders were to win it, he would be doing something he is unable to do in 2016. if you look at texas, 20, that number for him in 2016 was 21. >> steve, can i just ask you, this is admittedly a little point west sometimes get an age bias in the different waves of exit polls. they sometimes show as you different demographic when we look at the first wave.

is that also true historically in terms of race? the early numbers tebld to be different handle the what we ultimately find out? >> they can be. watching these results come in the last couple nights, the last couple big nights we've been here. i've seen more variance from the early numbers on what they became, versus the primary states. we didn't see a ton last week. >> let's bring in our friend, claire mccasskell. tiling. secret to life is timing. good evening to you both. claire, starting with you. we'll talk about delegates in just a hot second. tell us the story of your political party tonight. what do you think is happening? >> well, speaking as a political scientist as opposed to partisan, tonight is really exciting. frankly, we don't have good

polling. the big change in the election occurred on saturday. and it is only three days. and we have this massive amount of delegates that will be awarded tonight. and i don't know why but i've been thinking of paul mccartney all day as it relates to bloomberg. can't buy me love. that i think may be the story tonight. not just that biden does better, but money, whether you're tom steyer or mike bloomberg, does not connect with you voters. >> what is the calculus going into tonight? do you care to predict where we'll be at the end of this long night? >> i don't know that a firm prediction. i think a resuscitated joe biden likes the rest of the states remaining in the primary process more than bernie sanders. florida, georgia, mississippi,

it is incumbent that bernie sanders maximizes his delegate yield tonight. i think california is the cornerstone. how many delegates he get out of california. and the question is, joe biden, in north carolina, virginia, in tennessee, alabama, can he come close to offsetting the sanders yield? so this is a completely different race. to claire's point, momentum is clearly trumping money. for the biden campaign, you would like the match the money when the momentum so you fully capitalize starting next tuesday. that's really the delegate question. even on saturday night when we knew biden won south carolina. we were discussing. maybe biden can keep the delegate advantage coming out of super tuesday. this is a fundamentally different race handle the any of us could have imagined really 72 hours ago. >> you were so emphatic as the

results were coming in that only biden or bernie sanders have the chance to put together enough for the nomination. it is a two-man race. it's not. bloomberg is there and he's still a black box. elizabeth warren is there. while she hasn't been placing one and two, these contending in lots of places saying there is no chance she's getting out. do you see bloomberg and warren, not necessarily having a path to the nomination but having an impact that is something more than spoiler? how do you see their campaigns tonight in terms of their goals is that their impact? >> the reason i was so clear. i just looked at who can grow into the 30s and 40s which is how you get delegates. and really given biden's performance and his strength with the african-american community. if bloomberg and warren get delegates today, and i think they'll get some. do they have a path to the nomination? both have said they don't think

they can become the nominee by winning delegates, no. they can say whatever delegates i have, i endorse x or y. those delegates are free agents but i think it stands to reason that those dlelgs probably follow pretty closely what bloomberg or warren say. i think that's where they're left right now. and i think, i thought this was a two-person race saturday night. my suspicion is come tomorrow morning, it will be incontrovertible. even sanders or biden will face off against trump. >> let's talk about the part that polite people don't discuss over the dinner table. the firmly cleaved two sides. a long piece about what happened when the moderates realize that had bernie was getting so much traction. that goes right through tonight. >> yeah. and i think an important thing

to remember, the people that were worried, that stand for elections in places are much different and in grikts are much different than the overall votes in, say, a california or a massachusetts. you take majorities. we don't have enough bright blue states to get majorities in congress. so you have to find suburban grikts a districts that are capable of being blue or red. states like michigan and lie high that have the capability of being blue or red. those states on the ground, they knew it was worrisome. if bernie was the nominee. for the rest of the ballot. that's what was, but keep in mind, this didn't happen until joe biden did better. joe biden can, first he did better. and then everyone stood up and said, okay. let's go. >> and right before we go to a break.

one of the states where folks are voting is the scene of a horrendous tragedy overnight and a death toll now at 25 at our air time. what is happening in tennessee as a result? >> in terms of voting in tennessee, this is just been reported by the ap. nbc news has not confirmed this. this is associated press reporting. ferry ap, a judge has extended voteding hours in the second largest county in tennessee. davidson county. the democratic are presidential candidates, four candidates sued to keep the polls open after the tornado damage in the national area. so we are expecting that that will mean that whole county will be open an extra hour. there may be even further poll extensions at some of the combined mega polling places in tennessee. we'll keep you apprised. we're just getting early word on thor judging. >> we are thinking about our friends in the music city.

another break as the hour approaches. we'll hear what the campaigns have planned for this big night. . [ applause ] thank you. it's an honor to tell you that liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. i love you! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ no no no no no, there's no space there! maybe over here? hot! hot! oven mitts! oven mitts! everything's stuck in the drawers! i'm sorry! oh, jeez. hi. kelly clarkson. try wayfair! oh, ok. it's going to help you, with all of... this! yeah, here you go. thank you! oh, i like that one! [ laugh ] that's a lot of storage! perfect. you're welcome! i love it. how did you do all this? wayfair! speaking of dinner, what're we eating, guys?

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president obama. obama: he's been a leader throughout the country for the past twelve years. mr. michael bloomberg is here. vo: mike worked with president obama to combat gun violence and improve public education. as president, he'll work to combat inequality by launching a new initiative to spur african american and latino homeownership and small business growth. and he'll beat the divider in chief. bloomberg: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

coming in. when garrett talked about the two and a half hour lines to vote in houston, texas, this is kind of thing we're talking about. luckily, a mild night. they're all neighbors. they're all having a good time and they're all determined to get in there and cast their vote. let's check in with two of our road warriors covering the top two campaigns. it happens to be a town in vermont. and mike covering the biden campaign. we can find him tonight in los angeles. shaq, we'll start with you. what is the sanders camp telling you? >> reporter: well, the campaign is looking forward to tonight. he was on msnbc earlier tonight. senator sanders's campaign manager. i've been hearing all day, they're walking into super

tuesday with the delegate lead. you can look at the campaign schedule for that. where he's been traveling. he spent a lot of time in california. he has hundreds of staff members there. they've been knocking on millions of doors in the state of california. they're also focused on texas. just before he came to verlt, he was in utah and minnesota. the home state of senator amy klobuchar. so this campaign feels good about what they're seeing out west. the x-factor is what will happen with the southern states. we know coming from south carolina where vice president biden had that really big win over the course of the weekend and then followed by the enmed e endorsements, what impact do they have? >> thank you. michael all the way in l.a., what are you hearing? >> reporter: well, heading into

the first two in the primary process, the bidens were doing such a good job. they dropped all pretext. we knew he was in for a really rough night. tonight i'm taking my cues not from the campaign but from the candidate himself. i'm not sure if we have the pictures just yet but wind is in los angeles. he made the first of what we expect might be one of several local stops. he was wearing his aviators and having a chocolate chip ice cream cone. as the kids would say, that's peak biden. they feel the momentum it's over the last few days has carried them into super tuesday. >> his two weaknesses. er ray bans and any sort of ice cream. falls church, virginia, that's the first poll closing of the night. what we're waiting for at the top of the hour. hey, jeff. >> reporter: hey, brian.

we've seen huge turnouts here at marshall high school. one reason we're here is this polling place has historically been among the busiest. at 1:00 p.m., it had already surpassed in terms of turnout, the numbers in 2016. that's something to watch. this region, generally, one reason this is such a key region for all the candidates. the northern virginia suburbs, this region is responsible for shifting virginia from red to blue during trump's time in office. democrats now control the governor's mansion. they control the state legislature. and this area is literally hole to the d.c. establishment. you have the white house, capitol hill, the pentagon, ball a half-hour's drive from here. so this is home to the current and former government workers, military service members, also, a high couldn't sencentration o african-american voters.

it is one reason the biden campaign hopes it will boost his campaign. same thing with sanders. >> thank you. to josh letterman we go, who is standing by the campaign manager of the bloomberg presidential campaign. hey, josh. >> reporter: we are with the campaign manager here. i'll be speaking here in florida, not a super tuesday state but one two weeks from now. a lot has changed in the last 72 hours or so with the parties seeming the coalesce behind joe biden. what do you have to do tonight to justify staying in this race past tomorrow? >> well, we're finally into the really meat of the campaign. about now we had four states which represented 3.9% of the vote. we'll get 38% tonight. mike bloomberg is the only candidate in the race that has

campaign in the all freebl super tuesday states. i expect him to be above threshold in all the states and we'll see where we end. >> you think he'll get above the final% viability in all the states. >> absolutely. >> that's what your polling shows? >> that's what our polling shows. >>er mike bloomberg said today, he sees the path of the contested convention. what may think if you think there was a contested convention, democrats would want him? >> i have great almost for the former vice president. i happen to know him personally. i'm a mental of the party. there are lots of people here are members of the party. people who are members of the party will vote today and we'll find out how they vote in virginia, and nevada, texas, california. we'll see what they say tonight. >> mike bloomberg must be worried that his legacy is at stake here. he could be seen long term as a

spoiler for democrats if this doesn't go his way and it is handed over to trump. >> absolutely not. in the last cycle, mike bloomberg decide we definitely needed a democratic house. he led campaigns. 21 democratic members of the house. newly elected. 18 of them were women. more than a few republicans said mike bloomberg was responsibility for most pelosi being speaker and for impeachment which subsequently came. and we wear that as badge of only had. this cycle, mike bloomberg was committed to removing this president from office and he would do it from the sidelines sxfltd he decided like a lot of other americans, i don't want to be on the sidelines. and one thing about mike bloomberg. he will either be the nominee or the most important person to that nominee. >> you heard it right here. the bloomberg campaign saying they expect to be viable in almost every state tonight.

we know there are tough decisions that will lie ahead after the results come in. we'll have to see how it comes in. >> thank you. we go into tonight with these two strange and sad back drops. we have nine americans dead to coronavirus. we lost 25 souls last night in a natural disaster in nashville, tennessee. >> and tennessee, one of the states voting right now west just got an update from our decision desk in the past few minutes which is that although tennessee is listed as an 8:00 p.m. poll closing, we won't see any results or numbers at all from ten ten until one hour after that. until 9:00 p.m. eastern because the polls have been pushed to stay open an extra hour in davis county hit by the devastating tornadoes. so you won't hear anything out of tennessee for an additional hour. >> coming up on 17 minutes prior to the first call at the top of

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. 15 minutes to go. because things are already traveling fast and because we have these competing stories yet again. it was something kevin said at the end of his interview with josh letterman. the bloomberg campaign manager. we wanted to hear nicole wallace on this front. >> his response was, mike bloomberg will be the nominee or the most important person in the country to the person who is the nominee. let me say something about kevin. i've done interviews with you on election night when i wasn't sure how my candidate was going to do. it is a hard job to have. if things don't go bloomberg's way, he does be need thresholds

in every state. and if the bloomberg campaign ceases to exist at any point in the near future, that man will be the one who has the job of walking in and telling mike bloomberg, it's time. the point is only true is the nominee is joe biden. >> it would work for any candidate other than joe biden. >> i'll go with that analysis. there will be two people who have a path to the nomination. bernie sanders and joe biden. mike bloomberg only becomes the most important person to the nominee if the nominee is joe biden. i talked to two folks from the biden campaign. a couple folks in the bloomberg campaign. there is analysis that it is moving into group think.

i watched the speeches since the nevada caucus. he has turned the idea of an establishment. he's weaponized it again biden. they would have left him as road kill if he bombed saturday night. african-american voters, every age, male and female of south carolina and jim clyburn are the reason joe biden is hoping, and saying really, really good and cautiously optimistic. it is the african-american voters in south carolina. >> but all political coverage around the country is like the establishment -- >> the prominent democrats, after seeing biden perform well in south carolina, other prominent democrats said, okay, maybe joe can do it. there were doubts.

>> with friends like that, you should stoik african-american voters. these include people, former obama folks. the idea that bernie sanders could weaponize the establishment against jbl will be joe biden's fall. it's a lie. and bernie is strong enough. i say this as a dispassionate former republican. the establishment had nothing to do with joe biden's victory. he's flat broke. he has not a single ad on the air. his victory is owed to african-american voters, male and female of every age in north carolina. full stop. the momentum he has today, he can share credit with that for amy klobuchar, pete buttigieg, beto o'rourke, but the democratic establishment have

essentially turned their back on him. >> well, let's see how do you, joe. one other thing about that, the most important person to the nominee if he is the nominee. i think mike bloomberg would be super pac or whatever supporting biden, but because of the organization that bloomberg has put together. >> oh, it's incredible, no doubt. >> across the country paid through november. you know, that has done the sort of micro targeting and mailings and, you know, they are a lot more in touch with the electorate. >> and trolling as vice president already. >> the likes of which you don't see. >> facebook, other social media. they're doing it the modern way, the way you have to run a campaign as opposed to the democratic party. >> you could see mike bloomberg running the anti-trump campaign and joe biden could run the joe

biden for president. they could be separate organizations. >> they would have to be. >> separate projects side by side. >> a lot of our coverage late in the night is the prize to the far west. california is home to 40 million americans. it's also home to our own katie tur. she is tracking the vote at evergreen rec center in east la. hey, katie. >> 415 delegates in this state alone. not so great voting here right now. this is a line about 30, 40 people, 50 total in this gym. just here is a 2 to 3 hour line right now. voters have said they're extraordinarily frustrated. that's because there are only five voting booths in this room and two are them are down. one of them jammed a little bit earlier today in a paper jam. another has been down for four days. so there is a lot of frustration here especially in this community which is a diverse community both in age and demographics. a lot of latinos out here, some

who don't speak english. might have a harder time and older population that might have a harder time with some of the new machines. the latino population is going to be oh, so important in the state. the largest voting block in the state. if they come out in force, they could be the ones to determine who wins. bernie sanders has been making real in roads within the latino community, and not just for this election but there's holdovers from 2016. people and organization and leadership that's been here this entire time maintaining a relationship with this community going into -- if you go into a bernie sanders headquarters, what they'll give you is they won't say buy this t-shirt, they won't say we need to speak someone who speaks spanish. they'll have a spanish speaker there, community leader, send you out with pamphlets of aoc. they'll ask you to ul low guise in the community. they're hoping that pays off in the election.

there's a bit of a generational split between the under 45 voters and the older voters who like biden but rules are made to be broken. i talked to a young guy who left here a moment ago. he said he voted for joe biden. i talked to an elderly couple. they both said they were voting for bernie sanders. >> katie tur, east l.a. we have no federal elections really. we have no state elections really. elections are local matters and your ability to vote is only as good as your local precinct's ability to receive and record your vote. we're going to take a break. when we come back in just the next segment, we will have the first poll closing of the night. there you see it coming up in 6 1/2 minutes. hey there! kelly clarkson! what're you doing on our sofa? what're you doing on your sofa? try wayfair. you got this!

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coming up on three minutes to go before our first two states, first two poll closings of the night. >> i'm having a good time. i'm sorry. >> excited. three minutes away from vermont and virginia. >> david plouffe, two states that share a first letter could not be much more dissimilar. >> we won them both in '08 which is very nice. bernie's home state, small state, net delegates. virginia is really important. it was a battleground state. now it's probably leaned blue. you have a lot of suburban voters. heavy latino population. what we see in virginia is likely to have echos to its southern neighbor north carolina and maybe over in tennessee once that closes. so i think we are going to learn

a lot about what at least the eastern part of the calendar may look like tonight based on virginia. i will say one thing, brian. you showed the lines. we saw them in texas a state run by republicans. california, los angeles we own as democrats, the local government and state government. this is not complicated. how many people do you expect to vote? how many poll workers do you need? what equipment do you need? there's no excuse where we control the levers to have those lines. >> here, here. they've talked about constricting voting rights for years and years. this is home field vadvantage fr that party in that state. >> california has taken a number of steps legislatively to vote. you can turn up as an unregistered voter, register on election day and vote that day. you can in 14 counties in california, they mail every single voter a ballot.

you can hold on to that ballot, you can mail it without a stamp on election day. they make it as easy as possible. they have to be able to follow through. they have to make it so when you do show up and get in line. your country isn't asking for a heroic sacrifice to vote. >> you were able to vote in california at the same time iowans why caucusing and it's going to be said, depending on how much early vote is locked in, that that was too long an early vote period. >> we'll talk about this later on as we get close to -- >> i don't mean to make you the spokesperson for your home state. >> no, it's all right. i kind of enjoy it actually. california is very, very important tonight. it will be very, very important in terms of the total number of delegates. there's also zero chance that we're going to have complete results out of california. >> thank you for saying that. >> it's really not going to happen. not even going to try to get us those results tonight because of the way they cast votes and tally them in that state. >> truth in advertising. it needed to be said. no matter how late you stay up with us, it is highly unlikely

we're going to have a final take it to the bank lock cinch result. here's our big board. let's count down together, what we're calling an election alert. 5 seconds until the top of the hour. our first two poll closings of the night. super tuesday, 7:00 eastern time and the night it turns out begins with very good news for joe biden. good news for joe biden indeed. the commonwealth of virginia, he is at this hour at poll closing the projected winner. on up north to the state of vermont, as we were saying, not a big shocker here. the hometown -- home state senator bernie sanders, the projected winner. 8 delegates awarded out of 16. this is the delegate tally you'll be seeing for just tonight, the number on the far right is what's important. 1300 and change at stake.

two big ones to start off. >> yes. it will be interesting to see. even though there is no suspense about the vermont results, i think in 2016 it was senator sanders in vermont, 86-14. >> i don't know what you're saying. >> it will be interesting to see if he holds everybody to single digits. if he holds everybody else to the single digit viability. in virginia to get a poll closing call in virginia, i do think it's not a shock that joe biden has won in virginia. i personally am surprised that he's won by a significant enough and clear enough margin that we're able to call it at poll closing. that has to be a source of great cheer for the biden campaign tonight. this is a state where bloomberg and sanders were contesting it. >> they were worried about some of the people that live and work in d.c., young, democratic voters who are very active, very policy savvy being very excited about and attracted to sanders and warren. i think they are very heartened

by this win and this call. >> steve, now that we can discuss what we know and what we knew before polls closing, what kind of a night does this indicate to you? >> this call in virginia with no returns in, just based on the exit poll that has echos of what happened on saturday in south carolina. this is a huge development to start the night. let me show you a couple of reasons why. one of the reasons why you're seeing this call right now, it is the breakdown. we talked about black voters in virginia, look at this in the exit poll. 66% for joe biden. bernie sanders sitting back at 17%. this is a carbon copy of what we saw over the weekend in south carolina. there was some talk perhaps, some hopeful talk from sanders supporters that the south carolina result might have been a product of jim clyburn, a personal appeal he might have had in that state. what happened with black voters replicated in virginia.

in 2016 against hillary clinton in the state of va va, he got walloped. he got 16% then among black voters. tonight he is running at 17%. that tells you, i'm trying to see if we have the white vote here. also among white voters, i can tell you among white voters in virginia the exit poll is voting to a double digit lead for joe biden. what does that mean again? i said the nature of this delegate hunt changed in the last couple of days. let me show you what this means. right now on the basis of virginia and that lead in the exit poll, that very overwhelming lead in the exit poll, the decision desk is here that biden will receive at least 16 at-large delegates in the state of virginia, the commonwealth of virginia, that even with sanders collecting 8 in vermont, puts joe biden in first place in the delegate race, but this is 16. there are 99 at stake in virginia. and with the kind of margin you are seeing joe biden get in this

exit poll, the opportunity now for him is to gobble up like -- this isn't even an estimate, but the opportunity is here tonight for biden to gobble up 25, 30 to net 25, 30, 35 delegates out of a state bernie sanders just a week ago when you were looking at the only available poll data from virginia, you had sanders getting several more delegates than joe biden. you had michael bloomberg getting the same number. what you have tonight looks like bloomberg struggling to hit the viability number. we will see if he hits the 15 pers percent. overwhelming lead to joe biden. likely to translate into an overwhelming delegate advantage. on the exit poll he takes the lead. from virginia you can expect that number to go up significantly. as david plouffe said given in south carolina, given what we are seeing in virginia, that seems to portend something for these other states. certainly a pattern may be established here.

>> with the proviso who may walk into a given location, eugene, tonight may prove that congressman clyburn's words and his emotion and his value to the party are going to echo from the piedmont, to the tide water to the smokey mountains to hatteras. >> it may. african-american voters in south carolina responded overwhelmingly. that is resonating apparently in virginia and perhaps beyond. and, you know, it's hard to -- just remember back just like a couple of weeks. it was not at all clear that jim clyburn was going to endorse and it was doubtful that he would endorse bernie sanders but there was a lot of hesitation there. there seemed to be a lot of hesitation about endorsing his old friend and long-time

colleague joe biden. biden seemed so shaky on the campaign trail. not a lot of confidence. that's what the establishment was saying. >> the establishment hadn't got jerch behi en behind him. and then clyburn saw i think a very stark choice. is he -- you know, he's majority whip. he wants to keep that majority in the house. he worries about every one of those, you know, red district/blue district democrats who won in the last cycle. and he saw the prospect of bernie sanders leading the ticket and i think he decided that he had to -- he had to act. timing is everything. i mean, the moment he did it, the way he did it, the emotion that he put behind it and there were a lot of voters in south carolina who were waiting for that sort of signal. that sort of sign. what do we do? >> he also on that day -- on the night of the win, he didn't rest on his laurels. he gave that campaign some tough love that a lot of people in the

democratic establishment said turn up your fundraising, turn up your campaign. to that campaign's credit and candidate's credit racked up three big endorsements. we all sat here and said, what are they going to do with this win? too late to buy ads. look what that campaign did. i think there's a direct line between jim clyburn, the power of his endorsement. candidates are so psychologically impacted by momentum in the directions. clyburn's heartfelt words, my late wife and i, joe is our friend. it let him run in south carolina as his own version of his best self. being called and seen as a good man who's suffered a lot and gotten off the mat was the theme of his race and the theme of his campaign speech. >> whatever the opposite of a lukewarm endorsement is, that was what we saw.

steve kornacki i'm told has new numbers at the board. >> we have two new numbers we can show you again building on the story we were telling you in virginia a minute ago. we said early on, sanders looked like he might be running away with things. one of the questions was could he expand his support among older voters. that age divide has been so pronounced. 45 and older in virginia. this is a majority of the electorate in virginia. what are you seeing here? it's a resounding no. the answer to that question about sanders expanding his support, this is what we were seeing before in nevada. this is what we were seeing in 2016. a pronounced age divide. barely running ahead of bloomberg. barely ahead of joe biden. that is something we looked at. when sanders won nevada and we said is there going to be a bandwagon effect that rolls him all the way to the nomination, you would expect to see this number coming up significantly. there is a major chunk of the electorate. i showed you the black vote in

virginia. we said, does that portend something across other states tonight. i can show you across the south, if you look at the states up tonight in the south collectively, put the exit polls together, this is what the black vote is looking like at this hour. same thing. joe biden, 2/3. 66%. bernie sanders, 50 points behind. 66-16. this is the same thing that bedeviled bernie sanders against hillary clinton in 2016. inability to build black support costing him in states with significant black populations. again, we saw it in south carolina. we see it in virginia. that's why you've got the call. it looks like we are seeing this across the south tonight. >> let's go to l.a. mike memele. describe where you are and what we're waiting for. >> reporter: well, brian, we're in roscoe's chicken and waffles. the vice president has stopped for ice cream. after dessert he's coming for breakfast. >> he's hitting all of the major

food groups. they have an a for cleanliness in the window. >> reporter: i left my position behind the cash register. we're going to hopefully be able to inform the vice president when he walks in of what we just announced. >> there he is. >> for all of the reasons you outlined -- >> and you have a better vantage point on him than i do. >> it will be the next guy. rate after we get a couple more. hang on. >> reporter: it could have been a dopple ganger. >> that's true. i thought i saw him crossing the street in the background. >> reporter: good to see you. i'm just the welcoming committee here, guys. but, no, for all the reasons you stated, this is an important indication of where things are heading tonight for joe biden. the campaign -- in more difficult times they viewed south carolina as their fire wall. the place he absolutely needed to win in order to keep himself

viable, but as things were recovering for the former vice president they viewed it as a spring board, a launching pad for his candidacy especially if it could demonstrate the kind of support among african-american voters that they said is the only formula you have for success as a democratic candidate for president. when you see an early result in virginia, they're counting on similar results in other places in the deep south including alabama, tennessee, increasingly a place like texas which emerged as an important part of the super tuesday strategy, a place where he spent yesterday in houston and in dallas with the endorsements from pete buttigieg, beto o'rourke and amy klobuchar. of the 1300 delegates or more that are at stake tonight, more than 800 of those delegates are not awarded based on statewide results but on the basis of individual district results. the joe biden campaign has had a ranking of those districts. not all created equal.

the more african-american, the more gerrymandered. that's why you see joe biden spending part of his morning in oakland, california, which has most of the delegates and ending here tonight in los angeles. there might be some votes still at stake here. so they're -- with limited resources that not all the other candidates will. the biden campaign poured all of those money and resources into the heavily african-american delegate advantages. we'll see if we can ask the vice president about it. >> try the chicken and waffles. it's the best in the city. >> i already have. >> the whole control room is watching that restaurant. let's go to shaq brewster in vermont where they're celebrating the victory in their home state. what's it like there? >> reporter: that's right. vermont was not a state senator sanders was worried about. they were excited to celebrate

when that call came in on the screen. they cheered. there were chapts of bernie, bernie. when the call came in for vice president biden, there were boos. i'm told senator sanders is not here in the building, he's home with the family watching the results come in. his campaign is still saying they're feeling good. at the end of the day they want to come out of super tuesday with the delegate lead. as they're watching virginia, i'm waiting for a response. as they see these results come in, they want the delegate lead. they'll continue to watch closely. >> shaq, let me clarify with you. when they announced the virginia results, virginia was being called for joe biden, the sanders crowd booed at those results? >> reporter: they did. they did. it went from a loud cheer, it wasn't on nbc. they're not watching us unfortunately. when the first call came in with vermont there was a loud cheer.

big chants of bernie, bernie. then it switched. that's when you heard the loud boos. that's when the crowd completely erupted. the thing about this setting, this a typical rally. this is not a regular election night result here. a band is here. phish is going to perform. this crowd is ready to celebrate. >> thank you very much. fascinating stuff. >> i don't know if there are other campaigns where they boo at the mention of the other candidates. >> although bernie was booed at the last debate and that was a first. >> from the debate crowd. >> that was weird. >> but just the presence of boos at this portion of the campaign to your point. >> yeah, that was strange. every debate is different. it was a sort of -- it was a very volatile crowd making themselves known at the last debate. in terms of election parties, i'm not used to the crowd booing at the mention of -- especially

a candidate of the same party. >> not a good look. it doesn't project a lot of confidence. i think their candidate is still in a very strong position. what i was eluding to before, if we look back and the nevada caucuses end up being the high water mark for momentum and possibility in terms of growing bernie's reach and appeal, that will be a sad thing for voters. it will not be disconnected for some of the questions about the conduct. there are a lot of questions among democratic activists. i know a lot of democratic activists are passionate. >> impugn the passion. >> the passion is genuine and it's there but it can be pretty tough. >> intense. >> it can be really intense. you know, it's interesting. last week -- a few days ago we were saying does joe biden have a firewall in south carolina?

tonight before the evening is over we might be asking if bernie sanders has a fire wall in california, if he has -- >> wow. >> that's really interesting. >> all of the politics. >> we think eugene should have a counting for some of this. that was a heck of a quote from our friend gene. in addition to numbers filling up your board, can you start with an answer to this question? explain to the good folks watching how cautious are election unit is? how highly unusual it was for us to make a poll close projection for joe biden in the commonwealth? >> yeah, they are extremely cautious. this is two straight, i guess, but before that, if you can remember a couple of weeks ago, i know it feels like ancient history. the night of the nevada caucuses, an exit poll showed bernie sanders far ahead of the

field. not as far ahead as joe biden. as a result ahead even though we looked at the exit pole i would have gun to my head bet on that, they waited to get some precincts in. this has crossed an extra threshold for our decision. we are getting some actual results in. it's just a scattering right here but, again, biden leading overwhelmingly here. one thing i want to draw your attention to. the state called for biden. this is likely to be a very big win for joe biden. since we are in a delegate race and there are 99 pledged delegates up for virginia, when you're in a delegate race, you don't want a lot of candidates hitting the 15% rank. if nobody else, that means bloomberg and warren get 15. if it is just biden and sanders and it is a biden landslide,

biden is going to net something on the order of 30 delegates. he'll get 65, sanders would get 34, some split like that. a huge delegate hole. if you get an opportunity for that -- it just changed from 57 to 23. biden wants bloomberg and warren to stay somewhere close to where they are. looking at our exit poll, looking at some of the splits, it's very much possible that that's going to happen. >> out to the house of chicken and waffles we go. joe biden is entering the restaurant i'm told in los angel angeles. mike memele our man there. >> false alarm earlier. i think it's less of a false alarm now. this is the kind of thing that happens covering the biden campaign. he's on his way in. i've moved my position just a bit off to the side. >> is the camera inside your clothing?

>> while we're waiting for the former vice president to come in, i think what we're seeing tonight is indicative of some of the shift of the strategy from the biden campaign over the last few weeks. it was a strategy built around crowd events, crowd events that weren't necessarily the most highly attended crowd events in the iowa and new hampshire phase of this campaign. i think they recognize that democratic voters have come to love over the years is the one we see here, who is the one who is in their face, shaking their hands, glad handing. we've seen less of the traditional rallies that have 10,000 people or more in attendance and more just a focus on joe biden, the man, giving him opportunities to take selfies, to do the kind of retail that his campaign insists that he does better than

anybody. we're finally at the point where he's inching closer to the door. >> can i ask you about one thing you mentioned earlier which is you said vice president biden took a swing through oakland, california, today. >> that's right. >> that raised questions about whether or not he might be seeking to get an endorsement from or otherwise try to cultivate support from kamala harris who announced her campaign in oakland, california. any truth to that speculation or was that a random coincidence? >> that was -- speaking of false alarms, certainly a false alarm there. i think given what we saw yesterday with this unbelievable and well executed rollout of the former candidate's recommendation. it was something that was on the schedule for some time. we know senator harris had been voting. when we saw an initial report coming across that an

endorsement might be happening, we were suspicious. when i interviewed the vice president and i asked him whether or not he's speaking to some of these other candidates trying to court their endorsements, he said things are moving fast. one thing we know about other reporting from senator harris specifically is that she was interested in endorsing. she and biden do have a relationship that go back. her relationship with bo when they both served as attorneys general together. i know that's an endorsement he would love to have. that's a potential ticket that a lot of voters would love to see. timing is everything, and perhaps senator harris is interested in waiting for another moment to throw her support behind the president if that's in fact who she wants to throw her support behind. >> it has been interesting to watch the heavy waits make their decision. the wife of california governor gavin new some endorsing elizabeth warren. barbara boxer endorsing joe

biden. l.a. mayor endorsing vice president biden. mayor bloomberg getting an endorseme endorsement. californians are not used to mattering in presidential politics, in either party, the primary or technology. to see them get courted for something else, it's sort of fresh, i think, the structure in california. >> the identify dethat biden is going to be in front of the -- governors have to raise presidential campaign saz amounts of money to run for governor statewide in california because the media is so expensive. >> here we go. we may actually see him come through the doorway. >> mr. vice president. nbc projected you're the winner in virginia. what do you make of that call,

especially coming so early. >> hi, everybody. this poor guy wants to hide. it feels good. i don't know what the actual results are but it feels good and we're feeling optimistic. i think we're going to do well in other states as well. >> how do you define success for you tonight? >> i told you, i'm not the pundant. you guys will define that. >> let me just say, welcome, everybody. the reason why we're here today is because a few years ago we came here with president obama so it's got historical significance of coming here today with vice president. [ applause ] >> okay. hey, team, how are you back there? we're really messing things up for you, aren't we? >> they're also here with our mayor, mayor marcetti. [ applause ]

>> mike gibson. >> all here. >> leaders of the state assembly, mike gibson. [ applause ] >> all you. vice president biden is there, very excited about his win in virginia. let's go to elizabeth warren in michigan addressing supporters. >> cast a vote from your heart.

and vote for the person you think will make the best president of the united states of america. >> warren, warren, warren, warren, warren. warren. >> because i want you to think for a minute about this democracy, you. you are the ones who get to pick the person who will be the next president, and it is an awesome thing. you are going to do it right here in michigan next week. people are doing it in california right now, and that's what it means to have a democracy. i'm in this race because i believe i will make the best president of the united states of america.

and i want to tell you why. i was not born a politician, but i was born a fighter. and i want you to know this. i want you to know this. i've got to have a loud voice here. i come by this honest. i think that maybe the reason i fought all my life is because i learned this from my mother. i want to tell you a story about me. i grew up in oklahoma. okay. we've got a few oakies. i grew up in oklahoma. i am the baby. i have three brothers. i am what they used to call a late in life baby. my mother used to always call me the surprise.

yeah, my three brothers are all retired, back in oklahoma now. to this day they are referred to as the boys. that's to distinguish them from the surprise. now when i was in middle school, all three of the boys were gone by then and it was just my mom and my daddy and me. and my daddy had a heart attack. he pulled through but he couldn't work for a long, long time. and i still remember the day when we lost the family station wagon. i remember how my mother used to tuck me in at night and she would always kissimmee and give me this big smile and i knew what was coming next. she'd leave my room, close the door and then i'd hear her start to cry. she never wanted to cry in front of me. and i knew that. this is when i learned words like mortgage and foreclosure. and one day i walked into my

folks' bedroom and laid out on the bed was the dress. now some of you in this room will know the dress. it's the one that only comes out for weddings, funerals and graduations. and there down by the foot of the bed was my mother and she had on her slip and she was in her stocking feet and she was pacing back and forth. >> story for the crowd from elizabeth warren. we are approaching the bottom of the hour. that means poll closing in north carolina. robert gibbs, former press secretary in the obama white house has joined our conversation. robert, thus far, the night thus far your assessment of it for -- especially for joe biden but to a lesser extent bernie sanders given the results so far. >> well, look, i think the night has gone kind of as we have expected post south carolina,

pretty remarkable to see the movement in virginia, probably a tossup state five days ago. and a place that it looks like the vice president is going to do very well in. vermont is going to go strong for bernie. it will be interesting to watch the night as you see waves of real estate going to different folks, right? the arc of the north that will be the maine, the minnesotas, over into the colorados where bernie will do better. the southeastern swing where the vice president will do better. and then obviously the big prizes of the night. where does texas and where does california end up? i think we'll be fascinating to watch. >> 40 seconds coming up to north carolina. again, one of the more fascinating electorates, especially as the biden campaign had to look at it and target it. >> and a hard-fought state. north carolina is a battleground like you can't believe. bloomberg spent a ton of money. more than $12 million. biden hasn't spent much

anywhere. what he has spent he's spent in places like north carolina. >> the music heralds what's coming up. reading along as weigh approach 7:30 eastern time and the closing of the polls in the state of north carolina. at 00 we have 7:30 and it turns out a big night for joe biden just got bigger. we are making a pole closing projection. >> really? >> wow. >> that joe biden will win the north carolina primary. this is on top of joe biden's projected victory in the commonwealth of virginia. this is on top of bernie sanders projected victory in his home state of vermont. here is how we lay out looking at the delegates awarded thus far tonight. and here is how we lay out looking at the delegates thus far this season.

in all, remember, we have some big real estate coming tonight. it's not called super tuesday for nothing. steve kornacki at the big board. steve, i have to repeat my question. remind the folks how consequential it is to call the state of north carolina as a projection, 7:30 eastern time. >> we say they're rare. they're getting common. what we see here, demographic characteristics. 27%, just over 1/2 of t4 of the electorate. joe biden over 60%. sanders still stuck on that number of 16%. overwhelming support for joe biden. this is south carolina, virginia, north carolina. we are seeing it everywhere. when you look at white voters,

it's a double digit margin. it's not as much as the black vote but it is a double digit vote. that adds up to a landslide for joe biden. a land slide for joe biden in virginia. the results we're getting from the early states are telling us that the idea that there was broad momentum from joe biden is now being backed up by what we're seeing in the results. why do i say that? on saturday night as joe biden was winning south carolina overwhelmingly, we got a poll out of virginia and it put bernie sanders ahead by two points. that's how much movement, how quickly you've had movement like virginia and north carolina. it tells you the question i posed earlier in the night, was this going to be about bernie sanders or was your story going to be whether he got it. virginia and north carolina are suggesting the second story line

is the one we may need to follow. >> steve kornacki, can i ask you the follow up. the age. obviously senator sanders is that while he may lose moderate and swing voters. do we have any meaningful data in terms of figuring out whether the proportion of the electorate in these states is tilting young, or old, or neither? >> i'm looking at north carolina now in our exit poll. under 30 years old, 13%. there's 54/21. here's one i can show you, the under 45, over 45 divide. by the way, sanders is not. nevada? remember when bernie sanders was winning big. maybe there's a bandwagon effect.

this group was 56 sanders and 8 biden, the youngest voters. tonight 31 biden, 1/3 here dropping. and sanders from 66 to 42. biden. no in roads for biden may be able to. >> blockberg outpacing sanders. >> fascinating. let's bring into the conversation now a man who has been the man of the hour and uncomfortably so. he is the chairman for the democratic national committee. one e. top reasons. we've got five candidates left in the race, zarn sanders, joe

biden we've seen him do very well and virginia. a the former pryce vez continues to project this strength into southern states, what does that mean for the general election when we think about the ability to come and compete, we've become a 50-state party again. one of the first elections we invested in was doug jones in alabama. we invested in 2018 in georgia. we have an area where we put four different nominees. those states include north carolina, georgia, floor darks arizona. we're organizing everywhere. i think democrats can win everywhere. when you ignore the south you are really slapping african-american voters in the guys.

so we're absolutely competing there. we have two senate races in georgia. we're going to compete heavily down there. >> there's been a lot of drama in the field over the last 72 hours since south carolina. seeing three of your candidates drop out. seeing two of them endorse vice president biden and in those kinds of back room negotiations, those kinds of discussions about who stays on the race. >> no, those are up to end their campaigns. i trust them to do that. when you saw from the decisions of cap dates over the last few days, they understand it's not about any one can date. it's about making sure democrats can win. i respect their judgment and i respect the judgment of those in the race.

the night is young. we have two or three states that have reported. we have 11 to go. again, this is all about math. this is about 1991. a lot more to go. one of the things that's happened in your chairmanship. colorado, minnesota, utah, i might have missed one -- >> right. >> -- are all seasons with caucuses and holding their primaries instead. you'd rather have these states doing primaries. >> right. >> does that still hold? do you have any regrets on that movement? >> rachel, i think the four happiest people who don't have to run their own caucus. more people participate.

you busted through the turnout. look at south carolina. people said you would never eclipse him in 2000 out. we had 14 caucus states and we have 4 this time. it requires an act of the legislature. there are some republican governors who won't pay for an actual primary. we're certainly going to continue this conversation because i certainly prefer primaries to caucuses. more people participate. that's the bottom line. let's make it as easy as possible for eligible people to vote. >> sir, i know it's going to be a long, long night for you and for us. >> always a pleasure. we're going to talk to two of our friends in this segment. leanne caldwell first at the cameron village regional library and a great place, downtown raleigh, north carolina.

leanne, i know you talked to a ton of voters. we're able to see you forstarte. >> reporter: things are splitting overwhelmingly for joe biden. this morning we were at a precinct in durham, north carolina, which is predominantly african-american. we heard so many people talking about their support for joe biden. now we're in a fluent district in raleigh and the same thing. a lot of people are supporting -- supporting joe biden because of his momentum coming from them. he's perhaps the best person to beat donald trump in november. this precinct had great turnout, up to 50%.

democrats are pointing to voter enthusiasm as well. we're just seeing the last voters just exit now. things are going to close out real quick here. impressive victory at poll closing as our network for him. >> we're starting to get more of a delegate count. let me show you first of all some results from virginia coming in. nearly 1/4 of the state. joe biden is leading here by 30 points. this reminds you of south carolina at all? this is a huge margin. most of the vote in there -- show joe biden up 33%. north of it, again, more than half the day. just outside of d.c. this is epi sender of the to be

a trip. when you see him up 53-43, you can expect a big haul. biden has been allocated 16 delegates from virginia so far. he was just aloe gated 34 of the state's 99. he's been allocated if we can do too. it puts him 33 up and in the running count. if anything like this holds, biden can get 65, 70 of the 99 delegates out of virginia. that would leave sanders with far fewer. it gives biden an opportunity if this is replicated through the south. if he can run close to sanders even, in minnesota it sets up a scenario where we could get all the way out to california

tonight and biden might be running ahead. you could have gotten 40-1 odds. >> all of our friends cannot wait to comment on the numbers. we have another call. american samoa on the board tonight and there is your projected winner in american samoa. the former mayor of new york, michael bloomberg. decisive victory over tulsi gabbard, member of the pacific rim. we're going to regroup, gather ourselves as we look at the delegate board tonight. a break in our coverage. we're coming right back. we'll hear from nicole wallace, we'll hear from david gibbs.

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we are back and just to review. i can't over emphasize how cautious we are on projected winners. i can't under emphasize how overwhelming the indications need to be to call a state at the moment the polls close as we did tonight in north carolina

for joe biden. as we have tonight in the commonwealth of virginia for joe biden. at that same hour we called the home state for bernie sanders. that's where our discussion was right up until mike bloomberg won american samoa. >> american samoa meeting today with the time difference. we didn't know exactly when we were going to get those results. a handful of delegates at stake. mike bloomberg wins. tulsi gabbard may be in second place there. >> yeah. >> as goes american samoa, so goes -- -- we wanted to make sure we got your reaction to the way steve was describing what was going on in virginia. watching the suburban vote coming in. >> i think that's what's amazing. winning in the suburban

counties, virginia. cameron village regional library, stone's throw from nc state in raleigh. the types of neighborhoods that are crucial in a swing state. the congressional candidates in 2018 did well and where somebody has to do well in 2020 to be the next president of the united states. if that vote is starting to coalesce and pick somebody, that suburban college educated vote that hasn't gone to sanders or biden at this point, it could be a huge, huge development. i think a decent part of it is when you're running fourth and fifth in iowa and new hampshire, the electability argument is out the window. you look like a giant killer in south carolina. you project that electability strength and then all of a sudden it's not just the momentum, it's not just the endorsements but people think

you can be a winner. i wonder how much that's playing into people's minds going into those suburban districts and making that choice. >> the message has also changed going into south carolina and going into tonight. the week between nevada and south carolina for the first time bernie sanders record on guns and health care were an issue that was marketed to voters in those states. they went to the polls here in real contrast between biden and sanders around guns. those are the issues that turned suburban women. >> two weeks ago the day before this network's debate bloomberg in a poll was in first in north carolina. sanders was in second. biden was in third. boy, i mean, it's changed a lot in 48 hours, but in two weeks we've really seen the blunting of any growth by mike bloomberg. as you said, the beginning of the contrast on that record with bernie sanders and now the strength of biden come through.

it will be interesting to watch this throughout the night. >> pete buttigieg, too, was the first person who started making this argument part of his public messaging. i think he was with chris matthews in the spin room after a debate and said i'm talking to all of these candidates who won in the midterms about what they need and what they want. and they don't want to run on a rev nu revolution. joe biden picked up not just the endorsement but this message. and if you look at sort of the trauma i think a lot of democratic primary voters feel, they don't want to just win the white house. they want to send mitch mcconnell into the minority. >> let me bring claire mccaskill into this conversation. claire, looking at -- senator sanders in vermont. both calls implying these are big wins. what is your reaction to that? >> well, first of all, it is remarkable that joe biden has done what he has done in virginia with one field office. one field office.

i mean, that's crazy. i mean, nobody wins a state with one field afoffice. i think he went to virginia one time. so, clearly, something is happening organically here. and i think maybe the most damaging thing to bernie sanders before this evening is over, depending how it all plays out, is his narrative may get blown up. that he is driving turnout. that he is driving a new surge of voters. if, in fact, we have these lines all over, and if biden is winning these states, then it's going to get flipped. it would be that biden is driving turnout. and not bernie. and that may be more damaging than even his inability to gather enough delegates tonight to step into a, you know, an absolute ironclad front-runner status. >> it's a double-edged sword, though, isn't it because senator sanders case is that he can turn out young voters and first-time

voters. but so far, we are not seeing a big surge of young voters. but broadly speaking, the democratic party wants to be driving as much young voter turnout as they can. it's not just a sanders-specific argument. that's how we got barack obama in 2008, how we got him re-elected in 2012 to an extent. >> we need bernie sanders' supporters. we need african-american voters. we need those suburban women, who don't like trump but have never really called themselves democrats. we need all of them. and the thing that strikes me, rachel, is that a front-runner tries to bring everybody to his case. a front-runner doesn't demonize the other side. a front run you are is busy trying to build bridges and bring everyone's supporters to their cause. and the more bernie calls joe biden, who hasn't been able

to -- i think he came in fourth in fundraising. the corporate establishment has not funded joe biden. the more he demonizes all the people that supported any of these people, the harder it is for him to really claim any kind of front-runner status mantel. >> claire mccaskill, thank you. looking at seven minutes until our next round of poll closings. 8:00 eastern time. a bunch of them. we will take a break now so we can come back, uninterrupted, and be here for the top of the hour. we're oscar mayer deli fresh, and you may know us from your very first sandwich, your mammoth masterpiece, and whatever this was. oscar mayer is found in more fridges than anyone else, because it's the taste you count on. make every sandwich count.

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massachusetts. oklahoma. and maine. alabama takes on an extra kind of significance tonight because of the trend we've seen. and our man in bessimer, alabama, tonight is trymaine lee, looking to see if biden can thread the needle across the south. hey, trymaine. >> hey, brian. i'm here about 20 minutes outside of birmingham and i have been talking to voters all day about what went into their decision in terms of who they were voting for. and a couple themes emerged. one, it was after almost four years of donald trump, a sense of normalcy. let's get back to normal. steady this ship. but the other was decency. people said it time and again

they wanted a decent candidate to go up against donald trump. and when i asked folks whether joe biden's win in south carolina and whether all the endorsements that flooded in after south carolina mattered to them, they said most definitely, it reassured them of their decision. but when i asked about james clyburn in particular, when he said this is a good man, a good man, here in alabama almost 55 years do the date of bloody sunday. those were good men and good women to the folks in this state. let's not forget 55 years, we are the generation of black people who really have the first right to vote legally sanctioned. that's not lost on folks here. so they talk about steadying the ship, fingers point towards joe biden. i talk to a bunch of folks, still a small sample size but they said it came down to joe biden and bernie sanders mostly. and they said they felt best

with joe biden. small sample size but this is what the folks are saying, brian. >> thanks for giving us something we can improve on. trymaine lee with an enormous bit of reporting and eloquence. >> one piece of news we touched on earlier was that we, earlier in the night, expected that one of the closings at 8:00 eastern was going to be tennessee. we are not going to be making any sort of call in tennessee rega regardless of what the numbers are because there have been some polls that have been extended because of the deadly tornados in tennessee. so because of polls being extended in davidson county, also some large hub election sites being held an additional hour, no matter what numbers we get into the state. so just to avoid confusion there, we are looking at calls from alabama, maine, massachusetts, and oklahoma. >> and any other given night on this network, we would be talking about the horrendous loss of life in the nashville

metropolitan area. but, of course, this is our lead story tonight while we keep them in our thoughts. coming up on ten seconds now. again, maine. massachusetts. oklahoma. alabama are our closings it's i 8:00 eastern time. let's get going. and it looks like to trymaine's message he was receiving from voters about normalcy, about decency, voters in alabama have delivered for joe biden. the projected winner at poll closing. massachusetts, too early to call. you see there your top two leaders. oklahoma. too early to call. and in the great state of maine, all the way up north, too early to call. quick reminder. how they stack up so far tonight. we called north carolina for joe biden at poll closing.

we called the commonwealth of virginia for joe biden at poll closing. we called the state of vermont for favorite son, local man, bernie sanders. the delegates earned tonight. the commanding lead of joe biden with the proviso that it's early yet. the delegates earned, thus far this primary and caucus season, for the democrats. see above proviso. the numbers are impressive. steve kornacki has more at the big board. steve, throw alabama on the pile. >> we have been talking about the black vote. looking a lot like it did in south carolina. alabama. this is going to have the largest black population any state tonight. you heard the call for biden. 44% in alabama african-american tonight. 7 72% of them going for joe biden. nearly half the electorate. he is getting more than 70% of the vote from black voters in

alabama. this is overwhelming. looking on pace to be bigger than north carolina and virginia just when you look at this. something else significant we are seeing. you mentioned in massachusetts, we haven't had that in the south so far. take a look at what we are seeing here. a breakdown by gender in massachusetts. so, first of all, among men, 44% of the electorate. you see sanders leading here. look at this, by the way. you see biden at 30%. excuse me. let me just get this right. i see biden here twice. i want to make sure i am getting this correct. warren's 19, is that correct here, adam? i'm asking my producer this. the key i wanted to -- yes, warren is at 19. this would be 36, sanders. 30, biden. and 19 for warren. and if you look at women in massachusetts, check this out. you see biden, 28. warren 30. so first of all, you see a gender gap but i think the most significant think you see in this exit poll is that joe biden is 30% with men and 28% with women. in other words, he is way over that 15% threshold.

just a couple days ago, there was a poll in massachusetts and he was running at 11%. at 11%, joe biden was going to get zero delegate s out of massachusetts. what is coming into focus? when you look at the call we had in virginia, north carolina, and alabama. and when you look at the scale of victory joe biden is racking up in those states, there is potential in those three states alone for joe biden to net something like 100 delegates over sanders. meaning his cumulative margin in those states over sanders, in delegates, could end up being around something around 100. coming out of those three states alone with an opportunity for biden to add to that in tennessee and arkansas. states with some similar demographics. it was an open question a week ago if biden was going to be able to get even as many delegates as bernie sanders in these states. instead, looks like he is due for a massive haul here.

then when you look at potentially being well over that threshold in massachusetts, first of all, he is not going to get shut out of delegates. that was looking like a possibility the other day. there is potential there maybe biden wins it. maybe sanders wins it. maybe warren wins massachusetts. but if they're bunched together, no one is getting a clear advantage out of massachusetts. maybe one wins by five delegates. maine -- vermont coming out of new england. sanders is netting 10, 20, 25 delegates out of new england falling behind by over 100 in the south. we said at the start of the night, dream scenario for biden on what was supposed to be sanders' big night. dream scenario for biden is he leads in total delegates at the end of the night. we are, what, two hours into our broadcast. it is more possible now that that will be the case than it was when we came on. >> steve kornacki, can i ask you

a clarifying question about the massachusetts results? when brian did the call there, he described it as too early to call. and then we got a picture of bernie sanders and joe biden for massachusetts. obviously, massachusetts, elizabeth warren's home state. and the numbers you were just showing, at least in terms of the gender breakdown, it looks like massachusetts senator elizabeth warren was holding her own there. is she in contention there? >> i mean, you can see, look, the electorate here can try to do this math yufrs. you see the electorate here, it's a little bit more than 50. it's 56% female. you see warren is in the exit poll, leading that slightly. it just there is that gender gap. and i apologize this graphic is confusing but warren -- okay it's been fixed now -- warren running back at 19%. what you are seeing, again, biden 30 and 28 between those two groups. so sanders benefitting more from male support. warren benefitting more from female support. biden, kind of threading the needle there doing well with both groups. and i think if you do the math, at least you see in the exit poll maybe biden and sanders a little bit up on warren there but we will see as results come in. >> again, the projection there

too early to call. that's obviously important for senator warren because that is her home state. also interesting, we get a call at chosilosing time for alabama vice president biden. we don't get calls, it's also too early to call in maine and oklahoma. if my memory serves, those are both states that senator sanders won in 2016 over hillary clinton. he was 64-36 in the main caucuses. and in oklahoma, he won by ten points in 2016. but in both of those states, we have got too early to call at this point. fascinating slew of results. let's bring into the conversation now the beloved reverend al sharpton. host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc. what do you make of this poll closing call? >> i'm not surprised. i think that i have been saying all along that if you go into states that have diversity, biden was always a favorite. and i think a lot of it has to do with his work with barack

obama. but i think a lot of it was also accelerated by what happened in south carolina. and what i think we are seeing tonight, and i think you or brian mentioned it, is that the surge of young voters has not happened, so far. the night is early. and the turnout seems to be more biden in the states that we've seen than we've seen of sanders. and i think a lot of us were buying into what ends up now looking like some political talk of projections by one camp rather than the reality. as i travel around the country, a lot of people were saying they want stability. with the -- with the coronavirus, don't underestimate the impact that could be in the middle of this disaster. and you are looking at a president that starts by calling it a hoax, and now is still fumbling. a lot of that are in people's minds as they went to vote today.

and so far, the night is a huge night for joe biden. >> let me ask you about senator sanders in the south. i mean, one of the things that seems very positive for senator sanders is obviously he's been the national front-runner. also, really improving his standing among latino voters. that said, he got crushed by hillary clinton in the south in 2016. he ran basically equal with her everywhere else except in the south. that hassen't changed. he just got walloped in south carolina by 30 points with the best turnout yet. apparently, walloped tonight in virginia and north carolina and alabama with these poll-closing calls. which means it's not going to be close in any of those states. i thought senator sanders was adding to his likability and sort of his range by really turning it up with latino voters. but we are not seeing any sign of that at all in the south and among black voters in particular. >> we're not seeing that at all. and i think we must remember, even in nevada, rachel, he --

which was a caucus, by the way, not a primary. he lost the black vote in nevada. he lost the black vote where he did very well with latino voters. i think people misunderstand that a lot of people in the african-american community are a lot more conservative on some issues than they are on racial issues. and that they miss that when you look at the breakdown of their opinions on certain things. and i think joe biden is closer to that with a lot of people i talk to. i'm probably further left than a lot of blacks in the south. and -- and it's not only because i'm from the north. but it's just the way this landscape is in the country. and i think we don't really have a feel for it. >> do african-american voters turning out at every age group and across the gender divide for joe biden, signal something nationally? i mean, we talk all the time at 4:00 about how, you know, if you're -- if you oppose donald

trump from policy perspective or you are offended by the rule of law, that's nothing compared to feeling targeted or feeling, you know, with the immigration policies. and the whole bucket of issues just seem to be more urgently felt in diverse communities and diverse states. do you think that is something we've paid less attention to than we should have? the writing's been on the wall in every poll. biden's been on top of every poll in south carolina and southern states for almost a year. >> because you are not discriminated against based on age and when you are dealing with people who have been shut out or feel discriminated, whether you are young or old, you want to fight that. and i think a lot of people saw a generation gap that was more acute in their mind than it was in reality. now, there are differences between young blacks and older blacks. a lot different between me and my daughters. but it doesn't mean that we would not go and politically to say we want to see the same kinds of things.

to confront the inequality and the institutional bigotry that we have to face. and you face it because of the chore color of your skin. >> rev, let's mirror a brief conversation we had during the break. tonight, we are missing our mutual friend, who i would never normally describe as retiring. chris matthews. chris liked, above all, destroying a political bromide and he loved a political moment. which brings me to the endorsement in south carolina, in an era where we're not supposed to have kingmakers in our politics anymore, i think we disproved that. >> i think that james clyburn is -- has a impeccable reputation. across the board. open beyond his congressional district. and it meant a lot because he -- you must remember, he endorsed him at a time when there was not all of the guarantees that biden would do as well as he did. it was a lot of risk. and for clyburn to stand there and take that risk, and say this

is a good man. he spoke to the hearts of a lot of people that trust him. and that trust his judgment. and if you're going to run in south carolina, i did, you want jim clyburn, if he's not going to endorse you, at least be nice to you. and it means a whole lot because he is the guy that, in the south, i don't know anyone that has more stature than him. probably not in the congress. he and elijah cummings were the two guys in the congress that everybody related to. and i think that clyburn deserves a lot of credit tonight. >> it was two days after the nevada caucuses. i mean, it was two days after sanders, as steve kornacki keeps saying -- >> it was two days after the whole world was saying bernie sanders is going to roll this all the way through. and clyburn stood in front of the storm and said, hold it a minute, i'm with this guy. and i think it took a lot of courage. we did a breakfast that morning. a minister's breakfast and when clyburn walked in there, he told

me on his way i'm announcing my endorsement and it was a morning that people would say, why would he do that right after nevada? but that's the kind of guy he is. that's why he's earned that kind of trust. >> can we talk for a second about mike bloomberg? heading in super tuesday, he was the big black box. nobody knows how he is going to affect this race. nobody's ever run exactly in this way. nobody's ever run with quite that big a truckload of money clearing the way for him. but so far, we have got results from north carolina, alabama. too early to call in maine, massachusetts, and oklahoma. we do have a mike bloomberg victory in american samoa but don't have him placing, apparently as of yet, in the top two in any of the three other states we got results from or that we are watching. if this is going to be the kind of night mike bloomberg has, and maybe somewhere other than american samoa will turn out to be bloomberg country. but if that's it, what happens to mike bloomberg in this

race, rev? >> i think mike bloomberg should keep his war chest there and help someone who can win. i think he ought to start preparing -- we'll see what happens the rest of tonight -- but preparing to start doing some money transfers. >> you know what i've been imagining? a meeting convened by the reverend al sharpton between mike bloomberg and democratic party likely nominee bernie sanders. >> listen to you stirring things up. >> senator sanders is still one of the two front-runners at this point. we don't know how things are going to go. california's going to be huge. texas is going to be huge for him. we'll see. if he ends up fighting to the death with joe biden, it looks like bernie's going to pull it out and he is going to be the nominee. he is the only candidate in the democratic field who said i don't want mike bloomberg's money. i'd rather not have it than give up any benefit that he is going to give me. does somebody like you, who knows everybody in the democratic party, does somebody who has good faith, a good-faith

reputation and is a good negotiator, who has credit with all sides, step in then to try to undo that? to try to make sure bloomberg's money still runs? >> i don't know. but i think somebody should say that the goal is to try to save this country and bring it back to a level of decency and the standard of the presidency where it's respectable. and that argument should be made, if we get to that point. >> i think you'd be the best one to make it. i'm just saying. >> seems like you two should talk offline. rev, thank you for stopping by our conversation. appreciate it. now, to our human delegate calculator. one david plough standing by. david, where are we? >> well, i want to start by saying and we have talked about, well, just three or four days ago, joe biden was trailing in north carolina. how can he win? let's remember, in politics, it is always easier for a candidate to win back vote they lost that they never had. so when biden was performing

poorly in debates in iowa and new hampshire, a lot of his support, african-american voters primarily, parked in undecideds. once he astroshowed strength, t came back to him. rachel talked about bernie sanders struggled with the african-american community. was able to build support there. so where we are from a delegate standpoint is it's a dream night for joe biden, so far. this was a night i thought he needed to survive even after south carolina. he may end up thriving. so he is going to end the, as we get into the midwestern and western part of the night, with a delegate advantage. steve kornacki, in the last hour, mentioned if you are joe biden, you actually don't want bloomberg or elizabeth warren to reach viability in virginia or north carolina because you will net more delegates. this is how crazy the delegate system is. joe biden may, when we get to california, be hoping that bloomberg and warren, or at least one of them, is viable to keep bernie sanders' delegate yield down in california. so it's going as good as joe

biden could have ever imagined. and, again, it's worth -- like virginia. you have got the washington, d.c. media market. you have got tidewater. richmond. north carolina. these are expensive states. joe biden is racking up delegates with no money. little organization. no staff. and so he is benefitting from his national poll leader in the race. he held almost all of 19. lost it for a few weeks. now, he is getting it back. you look to march 17th, march 24th. can i put money and organization, together with the momentum, take a delegate lead that he might never lose? >> steve kornacki, speaking of upending political bromides, having one field office and winning a state certainly does that. and puts on its ear the usual argument about groundgame. >> that field office covered a lot of ground because you are seeing it in virginia to norfolk, to the washington, d.c.

suburbs, down to southwest virginia. this map is looking like south carolina. it's almost every county here, biden blue. and look, you have basically got two-thirds of the vote in. and this 30-point margin for joe biden is holding. our decision desk has not allocated all the delegates here. but again, if something like this holds, you are looking at getti getting something like 70 delegates out of virginia. looking at sanders getting something like 29. but again, the hope for sanders here was to get the most delegates out of virginia. and look, and biden is getting something like that out of here, sanders has one big win tonight. his home state. he is inwining this thing by a similar margin but what would this translate to? something like 12-4. meanwhile, he is losing 40 in virginia. and what's happening in virginia is happening in north carolina and alabama and could happen all across the south. >> i have a request. at some point, could you put together a map of counties south carolina, north carolina, virginia.

i would love to see how that works. >> yeah. >> if that breaks the big board -- >> this is why we can't have nice things. we're not even halfway there yet on a huge night of results. don't forget, arkansas closes at the bottom of the hour. we'll take a break now. we'll come back with that, uninterrupted. ♪ the amount of student loan debt i have i'm embarrassed to even say

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in these next few minutes, we have another poll closing. but first, we have pictures of the long lines, first in east l.a. and then in sacramento, california. with folks taking this primary election day seriously. remember, california is not usually in the money on super tuesday, so this is a huge opportunity for the 40 million americans who live there. >> can i also say -- >> you can say whatever you wish. >> we have seen reports tonight of long lines. seemingly, for different reasons, in different states all over the country. i would just say if you are in line to vote, if you are waiting in line, if you are considering whether or not to get in that line, your country needs you. thank you for going out and voting. thank you for sticking with it. if you are standing in line right now, and you have got stuff to do and you're worried maybe my -- this is going to be for not because the polls are

going to close before i get to the line. that is not true. if you are in line, you will be allowed to vote. if anyone tells you different, have them call me. this is a really important election. this is a really important primary. you making the effort to vote means everything. it sucks in our country that it is so hard to vote and that happens in democratic-controlled states, republican-controlled states. sometimes it's inadvertent and sometimes it's on purpose, which is evil. but if you are out voting, stick with it and your country thanks you. >> it also may be after a long day at work, you are listening to us on sirius xm satellite radio and you are wavering to rachel's point, the car knows where to go. >> get in line. >> alicia menendez is in beto o'rourke's hometown of el paso, texas. alicia, tell us what you have seen there today and tonight. >> brian, we have less than 40 minutes until polls close here in el paso. we have been at this polling

location all day speaking with voters. we speak with one sanders supporter who said she made her mind up weeks ago. but otherwise, every single vote we've spoke with cast their vote for joe biden. and they made thier mieir mind the last few days. they said they were waiting to see what happened in south carolina. and the triumverant of endorsements from o'rourke, buttigieg, and klobuchar, put them over the edge. remember, this is also a large latino community. 85% of the population of this county is laity know. just seven months ago, this community was rocked when a white nationalist went on a shooting spree leaving 24 dead, 22 injured. also, a border town where the humanitarian crisis is in sharp focus. voters we spoke with said those issues might not be front of mind but they have voters

focused on one singular question. who could beat donald trump in november? >> terrific reporting from el paso. alicia, thank you for that. >> we should mention there is some numbers on the side of the screen there that you saw from texas. even though post polling places haven't closed. we do have numbers coming from the slice of texas that is in a different time zone. >> the real raw numbers. they are politicalublicly repor. we are just holding off on any characterization we will make until all time zones have worked their way to the west. donna edwards is with us, former democratic congresswoman. these days, column writer for t"the washington post." >> i think, you know, if you look at the vote that's taken place. first of all, voters, black vote in particular, who have been driving this in south carolina. i started to get an idea of what was going to happen in north

carolina and states like virginia looking at the suburbs of south carolina. the suburbs of charlotte, north carolina. and those all went to joe biden. and that told me a lot. it's my home state. that told me a lot about what was going to happen in north carolina. >> so looking at the south carolina results, some of those counties and towns that are essentially adjacent to north carolina communities. >> yeah, they're beside recommend communities of charlotte, north carolina. and charlotte is -- you know, a lot of highly educated voters. >> research. >> research. the financial sector. >> banking. >> and those are the voters who are voting in north carolina. and then i think you couple that with what has happened in virginia. those northern virginia suburbs. and also, charlottesville. those are -- those are voters who are democrats. they're moderate democrats. so it's not a surprise to me. look. i'm a progressive and i love voting progressive. but i know that in order to win

a national election, we have to figure out a way that we pull all of this together. >> and who pulls that under the tent? >> were you at all shy about that conclusion you came to in south carolina knowing the kinds of money that was spent in north carolina? i mean, bloomberg, over $12 million in the state. sanders, nearly $2 million in the state. biden's under $300,000 in north carolina. nevertheless, he gets a poll-closing definitive call that he is going to be the projected winner there. >> well, part of it is that, you know, especially some -- the black voters that we're talking about a third -- or a quarter of the electorate in north carolina. those are voters who want to vote for somebody they trust. and also, they want to cast a vote for somebody who is going to win. and i think south carolina told them that. and you can see that projected all through the south. and i think we're going to see it across the country tonight. >> here's what's going to happen. you've got the counter in the corner of your screen. we're going to listen into mike bloomberg for a bit. and then we have a call -- we have a poll closing in arkansas

at the bottom of the hour. >> supporting our campaign. including phil lavine, and congress members ted deutsch and stephanie murphy. let's hear it for them. now, it's great to be here in this beautiful state. i know you're not used to seeing a new yorker in southern florida in late winter. but, unlike the president, i didn't come here to golf. or to reveal classified information to mar-a-lago members. i came here because winning in november starts with florida. and if i'm the nominee, let me make you this promise. we will beat donald trump here

in florida and in swing states around the country. now, tonight the polls are still open in a number of super tuesday states. and as the results come in, here's what is clear. no matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible. in just three months, we have gone from 1% of the polls. >> it is 8:30 eastern time. and you'll note we're just bringing this in from the side because we only have 1% in. and in arkansas, the result is too early to call. please, note biden with 59% of that 1%. bloomberg with 22% of the 1%. we'll go back and listen to mike bloomberg, who is, fair to say, not having the night he thought he paid for. not having the night he was hoping for.

>> and to start rebuilding our country and to start getting things done. and i mean big, important things, like stopping gun violence. and fighting climate change. and, finally, achieving affordable health coverage for all americans. this is a campaign for change. a campaign for sanity. for honesty. a campaign for inclusion, compassion, competence. and a campaign for human decency. and this is a campaign to bring our country back together and put the united back in the united states of america.

that's the message i've been delivering, not only to democrats but also, to swing voters who will actually decide who will be our next president. and tonight, we've proved something very important. we proved we can win the voters who will decide the general election. and isn't that what this is all about? now, my fellow candidates spent a whole year focusing on the first four states. i was out campaigning against do donald trump in the states where the election will actually be decided, like wisconsin and michigan and pittsburgh and ohio and north carolina. and, of course, florida. president obama proved that a democrat can win all those states. but in 2016, we lost them all. well, i'm running to win them back. and together -- and, together,

we're going to get it done. now, we all know trump's strategy. attack democrats. make their plans look unrealistic, unaffordable, and undoable. that won't work against us. our plans are sensible, workable, and achievable. and we have the record and the resources to defeat trump in swing states the democrats lost in 2016, like florida. i know we can do it and you know who else knows it? donald trump. and that's why he keeps attacking us on twitter. today, he sent a tweet out urging people not to vote for us. gee, i wonder why. clearly, trump is scared stiff of facing us, and for good reason. in every campaign i ran for

mayor, we built a broad coalition that brought democrats and insidependents and moderate republicans all together. donald trump called me short. i said where i come from, we measure people from the neck up. that's how we're going to beat donald trump. i believe we need a letter -- leader -- who is ready to be commander in chief, not college debater in chief. so if you want someone who talks turkey and who has a record of accomplishment on all the big issues facing our country, and who has the resources to beat trump, i'm your guy. and while trump tweets, i follow facts, respect data, and tell

the truth. my whole career, i have been a doer, and i believe we need less talk, less partisanship, less division, less tweeting. in fact, how about no tweeting from the oval office ever again? now, you have all heard our campaign slogan mike will get it done. let me tell you what it is. it means sending donald trump back to mar-a-lago permanently. >> we are back in the studio. we have been watching mike bloomberg in west palm down in florida where the contest is part of another big night, march 17th. and we thought right about now would be a good time to ask steve kornacki. i just read our friend rick wilson says joementum is real

tonight so we have established that. what about mikementum? how good, how bad a night is the former new york city mayor having? >> first of all, you can see the delegate count. remember, you are seeing these big wins for biden in big states. the count you are seeing right here, and it just went up by the way, a lot of delegates have yet to be allocated formally by our decision desk. in the next hour, you can expect that biden number to keep growing. bloomberg. he's got 4 from american samoa. that's what he's got to show for super tuesday so far. one way, virginia, almost all the results are in. 93%. it continues to be 54, 23. you can see -- >> unbelievable. >> a 30-point margin? good lord. >> this is like south carolina last week where you want to talk about how fast this thing changed? how fast this moved in the direction of joe biden? just the other day, poll there,

26 for sanders. 24 for joe biden. tonight, poll got sanders about right. what happened? this is a big part of what happened. fact that bloomberg checking in at 10%. looks like mikementum became joementum. that whole theory out there that bloomberg, if his supporters went somewhere else it might be to biden. that's what we start to see. take look down here in north carolina. right now, you see 35% reporting. bloomberg sitting there at 17%. that would be over threshold. here is a really interesting, realtime experience you can follow. this 35% you are seeing in morninorth carolina, that is overwhelmingly early vote. votes that were cast before south carolina. votes that were cast before the

joement joementum era began. >> steve kornacki, am i allowed to ask a follow-up question on race? >> yeah. >> on south carolina and virginia, what proportion of the electorate in those two states is african-american on these two election nights? are they roughly equivalent? i'm asking because we are seeing roughly similar margins for south carolina and for virginia. >> they're not is the -- is the short answer. i can show you reason for that. in south carolina, the number was 56%. 56% of the electorate was black. it is basically half that in virginia. looking at 27%. what is the other piece of the equation in virginia? what we have been talking about for two years. suburban, white voters. biggest county in the state, right here, fairfax county. right in the d.c. suburbs and there it is. joe biden, 52. san sanders, 23. i didn't see fairfax-specific

polling but i bet a week ago, this number was a lot lower, this number was a lot higher. for that matter, this number was a lot higher. when you look at virginia and look at the polling we saw until south carolina, there is a lot of persuasive evidence of consolidation around biden. and a ceiling for sanders. >> so the story of joe biden's success in the south, as told as of this point, is a story of african-american voters. it is also a story of suburban voters. >> yes, absolutely. >> unbelievable. all right. we're going to take another break. don't forget that at the top of this next hour, 9:00 eastern time, we have a big poll closing deep in the heart of texas. these are live pictures of the lines to vote at one polling place in austin, texas. we will go there live. >> stay in line. do not give upment st. stay in line. your vote will count. >> you can all go for some quality barbecue but you have to

vote first. look at that line. >> it's inspiring and it's also infuriating that people have to work that hard to vote. >> yeah, but the athleticism of our camera crews has to be admired. we'll approxima we'll be back with more right after this. back with more righ after this if you looked at america like a bird.

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we've had these partial texas results available.

publicly reported on the screen but, of course, we can't make a characterization until the last of the polls close in the great state of texas, which is not until the top of this next hour. we went to the break showing you the lines to vote at a polling location in austin, texas, which is, of course, the seat of travis county. chris jansing has been there talking to voters all the while. hey, chris. >> the lines here are insane, brian. as you know, i have been going to polling places on election nights many more years than i care to admit. this line goes all the way down there. they've got a guy who is in a chair there. they cut people off whatever 45 minutes ago. but look. i am going to walk as fast as my cameraman can walk backwards. it just goes on and on and on. people have been waiting three

hours to vote here already in travis county and i just got off the phone with officials here, they have far exceeded what they saw four years ago. 230,000 people total. they are at 254 now. and this isn't the only place where there are long lines. we are told, elsewhere in this country, elsewhere in harris county, the other big county, there are lines like this where they are hours long. now, see a college crowd like this. see a big turnout, conventional wisdom is it's great for bernie sanders. the asterisk has been would people change their minds at the last minute? i can tell you the other polling place i just came from, fully a third of people made up their minds in the last 24 hours. three people told me they didn't know who they were voting for. there were just two young women back there. they didn't want to go on television. who told me they didn't know who they were going to vote for. they wanted to know how long the line was. in other words, how long do they have to make up their behind? how long have you guys been

waiting in line? >> almost two hours. >> is it worth? >> of course, it's worth it. civic engagement. >> how long would you be willing to wait in line? >> as long as it takes. >> that's pretty much what i got at the end of the line, too. people saying they are willing to wait as long as it takes. this is finally the line that goes inside the entrance to voting. i just got off the phone with the folks at the state democratic party. they say, given these lines that they're seeing in just a few pockets of places around the state, they may not say exactly what the final count is until midnight, local time, which is 1:00 a.m. your time. and then you have that whole thing about how to apportion delegates, which can get very dicey. and they say until they have 100% of the vote in, or something very close, they aren't willing to do that. just a quick reminder before i throw it back to you. that, as we have seen before, hillary clinton and bernie sanders fought it out here.

but the winner of the popular vote did not guest tet the most delegates. so they are going to be very careful. they're counting very carefully. they literally have closed the door on what they call the war room of the state democratic party and awaiting final results places like this at the university of texas. >> what could go wrong? number three, chris, you have been absolved from any time on the hotel treadmill tomorrow. chris jansing in austin, texas, with the world's longest line to vote. >> it is awesome to see all those young -- first of all, austin, and texas as a whole is amazing. great to see all those people lined up. young people lined up when they don't know who they are going to vote for but they're just there to figure it outbit ti by the t they are at the front of the line. i love it. but also, it is an outrage. it is an outrage that it is this

hard to cast a vote in this country and i know it's not only texas but texas specifically over successive electoral cycles over the past ten years, the republican-led texas has made it harder and harder to vote. not only in terms of the kind of documentation you have to show when you get there. but also, they have been closing precincts. they have been closing voting places. systematically. particularly, in places that have high minority, young people, and poor people turnout. and so some of this is deliberate. and i will say you see spikes in voter turnout some places and you get long lines and it is more inspiring than infuriating because nobody tried to make this situation happen. but in some places in the country, and i believe texas is one of them, it's because the state government wants it to be hard to vote. and it is -- it's wrong and it should not take that much heroism and that much sacrifice to do your civic duty. >> i was just watching the camera now reach the end of the line in austin. i didn't mean to be staring out into the abyss. the home of 29 million of our fellow citizens, all in one

great state. steve kornacki at the board with texas numbers. >> as the voting continues out there, we have quite a few vote returns now in texas. so let me tell you what you are looking at. just updated there. you see 15% reporting. there is a lot of early vote taking place in texas. you see in the early vote that is tabulated so far, there's mike bloomberg. 20%. he'd be getting delegates. he'd be getting an awful lot of delegates with 20%. but the question now, again, when you see early vote tonight anywhere, you are looking at pre-south carolina vote. this is a snapshot of what texas looked like a week ago. ten days ago. before the political world, before the world of this race, changed. and in that world, mike bloomberg was running at 20%. take a look here. we are getting early vote out of dallas county. this is like 10% of the state. we just showed you fairfax county in virginia. we showed you northern virginia. this is another one of those places where you had suburb

suburbanites who gave that blue wave in 2018. you sigh biden narrow le leading. bloomberg at 20. what happens when we start getting the same day? does this bloomberg number drop? does this warren number drop? does this biden warren number d does the biden number start to rise? number two the biggest county in the state, harris county, you're looking at early voting. bloomberg well over 20%. this is what texas looked like ten days ago. the question is, is it what texas looks like tonight or has there been a big change? that's what the same-day vote is going to tell us. >> the biden campaign said saturday night, they said again tonight, their definition of success in the state of texas is to do well in dallas and houston. why would that be? can you talk about that strategy? >> let's take a look. let's go right back and zoom in so i can get it. take a look at dallas county. again, 10% of the state, we talked about there in northern virginia, those sort of swing

voters, suburbanits, those big in the democratic party. you find them in houston, you find them in dallas. take a look at what happened here in this county in 2016. hillary clinton crushed bernie sanders here. 71-28. again, that word ceiling. i wasn't sure if we'd be talking about it with bernie sanders at this point. but when you start seeing something like this, bernie sanders at 25% right now, bernie sanders was at 28% in a two-way race four years ago. now with far more candidates, he's still sitting there at 25. the biden campaign saying they're hopeful about dallas, they're hopeful about harris. they're hoping since south carolina in the new world of democratic presidential politics, the folk who were poised to vote for mike bloomberg will instead be voting for joe biden. some of the folks poised to vote for elizabeth warner will vote for joe biden. we had a three way race, three candidates over 20% will in the same day vote become biden

moving into the 30s, a double digit advantage over sanders. if joe biden can do that in dallas county, if joe biden can do that down in harris county, that's a quarter of the state. a quarter of the vote is from those two counties alone. >> steve kornacki, thank you very much. everything is big in texas including the implications of what voters do there tonight. joining us is evan smith, c.e.o. and co-founder of texas tribune, which is a texas institution, but a national treasure. mr. smith, thank you so much for being with us. it's great to have you here tonight. >> thank you. sure, happy to be here. big night. >> it is a big night. and we're watching these long lines of voters in certain precincts we have reporters at. what can you tell us from a sort of higher altitude view of what level of excitement there is about this primary in texas today. >> well, there is enormous excitement about this race. let me say i heard you talking about the problems of long lines and why it's so difficult 0 vote. we have 254 counties and 254

election administrators. the voting system in texas, rachel, is a hot mess, and the problems you're seeing in travis county, austin and harris county, houston, we're hearing reports of all kinds of problems around the state. that said, we had more than 2 million people vote in our 11-day early voting period which ended last friday. there was enormous thissism in both parties, particularly the democratic party it appears in this election cycle. as you said several times, that vote we're seeing come in now, that early vote, is really old news. it's pre-south carolina. i am really eager to see what happens today. the results could look very different based on the last couple of days in texas. >> i feel like there's been a lot of national punditry about the latino vote in the democratic primary. and it's been a little bit facile and productive. we've seen senator sanders make great strides in the way he appealed, tried to build organizing efforts in latino

communities. what should the national community understand about the latino communities inside texas and the types of appeals -- types of appeal the leading candidates might have for them? >> well, one thing about the hispanic vote in texas, in our experience over the last number of years is that it is not monolithic. the assumption is the hispanic vote is like the hispanic vote in california or the hispanic vote in nevada or the hispanic vote somewhere else. the hispanic vote in texas tends to be a little more conservative, small c, not big c. republicans tend to do well with hispanic voters you don't see in other places. i don't necessarily think senator sanders has a lock on the hispanic vote in texas the way he did, say, in nevada. the castro broers this, secretary julian castro, ran for president, got out of the race, supported senator warren and his brother joaquin castro supported senator warren, they were hoping

to get votes out for senator warren. i think she's the sleeper today. i'm curious to see where she lands. i think she'll do well in the hispanic community and take some of those votes away from senator sanders the way he dominated in nevada. >> we have seen almost nobody make a major financial investment in texas other than mayor bloomberg. >> correct. >> i feel like in a normal cycle you can extrapolate a little bit from money spent to results expected. it doesn't feel like that's the dynamic in texas. am reading that right? >> you're correct he spent a ton of money in texas. i wish i could show you the amount of mail we've all gotten from mayor bloomberg in the last couple of months. oh, my goodness the amount of money spent on that direct mail. but there is not really any reason to think based on what we're seeing the last couple of days that he is going to stay at that level that steve kornacki quoted a couple of minutes ago. the early vote is one thing. i think the dynamic of this race really has pivoted off of saturday. you know, vice-president biden got very significant

endorsements over the last couple days, including congresswoman veronica escobar in el paso, state senator in dallas. there is a consolidation happening the last couple days. i was skeptical, rachel, honestly coming into tonight that vice-president biden could overtake senator sanders if the early vote came in strong for senator sanders. just numerically it was a math problem for the vice-president. but hearing steve say that joe biden slightly beat bernie sanders in dallas county, slightly beat bernie sanders in harris county in the early vote, those are massive population centers. and now i'm beginning to think maybe joe biden is going to win texas. we'll see when the votes come. >> evan smith, c.e.o., editor in chief texas tribune. thank you, sir. >> a break from our coverage. we have a characterization of an existing race. don't forget we have a texas poll close coming up in just about three minutes. tomorrow.

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is this is a shot joe biden could end up winning texas. i mean, we're about to come off on poll closings in minnesota, colorado, texas. texas obviously a huge delegate haul. one of the interesting things about colorado, it's impossible to say about previous years, they're a conduction, it will be a primary tonight. very different results. >> we're being waved off to high expectations of having a lock cinch result. >> in part because colorado votes by mail in the same california votes by mail. these results, we will get them all. it's just a question of when.

>> we should emphasize to people if you're in california, you can hand in before polls close a ballot. so that kind of warps the result, at least takes longer to count. here we go, 9:00 eastern, you can count down yourselves to the top of the hour here. local time we have several closings at this hour and let's get to it. in the great state of texas which we have been discussing here, our call is this. too early to call. those two gentlemen, though, sanders and biden, both exceed the threshold. in colorado, the great rocky mountains, too early to call. in tennessee, a result delayed by the loss of life, terrific damage overnight from the tornado in the nashville metropolitan area. too early to call. in north carolina we have

already had this result earlier tonight. at polls closing, huge victory for joe biden in the commonwealth of virginia. at poll closing tonight, a huge victory for joe biden. in the state of alabama, as we covered, a victory for joe biden in the deep south. way up north to new england we go, the home state of one bernie sanders who handily carries his home state. american samoa on the board for mike bloomberg, the former mayor of new york and full-time billionaire. a victor in american samoa. massachusetts, too early to call. oklahoma, here's where we're going to improve our characterization. oklahoma is still too early to call. we are adding this. joe biden leads, in our view. in arkansas, too early to call. that came during mike

bloomberg's speech. in the great state of maine all the way up north, too early to call. here are the delegates arrived thus far -- awarded thus far tonight. 114, 46, in many ways, remember, the night is young. here are the delegates awarded thus far in the democratic process. 167 biden, 106 sanders. steve kornacki, you are having a night earlier than i thought we all agreed you were going to have a night. >> we have, i've got to say, brian, is shock the word? i'm trying to put this in some perspective here. what you just put up on the screen, the running delegate tally, 167-106, if it had been a week ago and you said at this hour it was going to be joe biden 167, sanders 106, i know sanders has california coming. i know there's a lot coming in texas. this is shocking in the span of

a week. i want to take a step back and give you a picture of the delegates coming into view. we are seeing joe biden landslide numbers. it's the same day vote coming in. his vote has gone 6 to 12 biden in the last half hour as the same day vote comes in. what it means, there's the potential here basically in these states here in the southeast tonight for biden to net over sanders when all is said and done, he has the potential, biden does, the potential to net 130 delegates over sanders, 130 more than sanders coming out of this region. you look at texas, you have sanders and biden both expected now to get delegates there. we don't know about bloomberg. we see the same day trend toward joe biden. there is a possibility in texas, it's a huge delegate haul. if this is a close race from a delegate standpoint, whether sanders is winning the state by three or biden is winning the state by three, it is not a huge difference when it comes to delegates. if sanders wins texas by three

points, you're not making up 130. you're not making much of a dent in 130. you look at what's happening here in new england right now. sanders gets a landslide in his home state of of vermont. what's that worth? he nets 8 delegates from vermont. in massachusetts you put the numbers up. a week ago, biden wasn't supposed to get delegates in massachusetts. right now in the returns, biden is leading in massachusetts. again, it's a close race there, but you're looking at the potential for not a huge delegate gain or loss for anybody in massachusetts. same story in maine. biden is in contention in maine. you're looking at sanders netting on a good night, i don't know. 15 delegates. sanders could get 15 out of new england. biden could net 130 out of the south. you're looking at texas. might be trench warfare in texas. you might be talking about 12 delegates this way, 12 delegates that way. the picture that is coming into focus right now is one where joe biden is going to have the lead in delegates when we finally get to california, the mother load with 415.

and if everything we are seeing in terms of this trend towards biden, this incredible trend towards biden in the last few days holds, he's going to make that threshold in california. if he makes the threshold in california, yeah, sanders wins the state. sanders gets a lot of delegates. is it enough to take that out? that's a very open question at this point. biden could absolutely be ahead in delegates at the end of the night, ahead in delegates and what was supposed to be sanders' big night. that's the big story right now. >> nicolle is -- >> color me as shocked with steve kornacki. i'm sitting here -- if he's doing college-level algebra, i'm doing second grade addition here. my numbers were nowhere near that. the idea that we are sitting here even contemplating that joe biden could be heading at the end of the night -- it's so remarkable. what's so interesting to me is the inverse. so, when barack obama won iowa, all the brilliant people who worked on his campaign said the psychological impact of that was african-american voters in south

carolina saw white people embrace his candidacy of hope and change. the inverse appears to be true. when the african-american vote came out -- i misspoke earlier. african-american voters under 30 by 2% voted -- preferred sanders, but everybody else -- >> in south carolina. >> in south carolina voted for joe biden. then what seems to be happening tonight, white suburban voters came out en masse. it was almost the inverse phenomenon of white voters in iowa embracing obama improving his embraceability. it was the overwhelming numbers in south carolina that signalled the democratic establishment couldn't have signalled if it wanted to. it is one of the stories so wrong being furthered by bernie sanders in his campaign. it suggests it isn't working all that well. this biden surge was fueled by jim clyburn's embrace, by the candidate's performance. he got much better. he got good, i daresay, at interviews. at debates, one of those

political retail moments. african-american voters in south carolina gave him their good house keeping seal of approval. it seemed everybody listened. you're seeing suburban vote move toward him, the late vote move toward him. i talked to a 30-year-old woman in california who wasn't sure. there is anecdotal evidence everybody made up their mind in the end was at least open to biden. >> jodonna edwards, when you sa down with us tonight, we had a smattering of results in, you said no surprises. you stepped into this thinking -- you sat down and told us this is basically the way you thought it was going to go. why did you have that confidence it was going to go so well for biden tonight? >> i only came to that conclusion in the last several days. this isn't something i thought for a long time because i didn't think -- i wasn't sure biden would be viable even by south carolina. and i think that when you look at black voters -- white voters as well -- people in this election have always said their

number one concern is electability, and electability defined as someone who can beat donald trump. and i think when they saw that, okay, it could be biden. wasn't a lamp post. they'd vote for biden. so that's why i wasn't surprised because the events of this last week have seen a coalescence of voters, not a coalescence of leadership. it's true that jim clyburn's voice and the way that he made his endorsement and what he said, people were paying attention to that, and that spread across the country. >> his last three words were, he knows us. that was such a powerful way to end his remarks. messieurs plough and gibbs. first to mr. gibbs. is a subhead of this story what i insist it is, and that is endorsements still matter? they've got to be the right person and they have to be timed correctly. >> well, and you couldn't have picked a better one than jim

clyburn. look, heaps secretary of whatever he wants to be in a biden administration at this point. i mean, he i think gave great reassurance to people that had been on the fence about whether joe biden could do this. and he nudged -- >> hey, i'm interrupting you for this projection. joe biden is your projected victor in the state of tennessee. polls closed, were supposed to close there at 8:00. everything was held over till 9:00. this is nine minutes after the 9:00 hour here on the east coast. remember, that state, the nashville metropolitan area, the germantown neighborhood reeling from a terrible weather event, a tornado last night. the death toll stood at 25 when we came on the air. so that has taken up the attention in so much of the stated to. but we'll go back to mr. gibbs in a second. steve, your read on this one. >> tennessee, i'm looking at our exit poll here.

the black vote 62% for joe biden, 18% for bernie sanders. this is the story we're hearing tonight. and again, you have some early vote here. this is another thing. the number is going to grow as more votes come in. and i just want to draw your attention quickly to one more thing that jumped out at me. you see basically all the vote is in virginia now. we keep asking this question about turnout. virginia, the state especially in the d.c. suburbs where democrats think they have high energy. you add up all the votes cast in the democratic primary right now with a few more to come in, 1,306,560. that is the number of votes cast in tonight's democratic primary. remember that number. take a mental picture of it because i'm about to show you what it was four years ago. it was 782,000 four years ago. turnout in virginia has nearly doubled in four years. 782 to over 1.3 million. where is that? it's all over the state

obviously, but again, the d.c. suburbs of northern virginia, the epicenter of the blue wave of 2018, the recent converts to the democratic party, fairfax county outside d.c. is the biggest in the state. here's the result tonight. huge biden win. most of it is in. right here you've got about, let's see, this is -- this is about 230,000 and change who voted tonight in fairfax county. 230,000. what was it four years ago? 137,000. up nearly 100,000 more people. in fact, when all the votes are counted tonight, probably 100,000 more people in the suburbs of d.c. of fairfax county voted in the democrat cracks primary. this time as opposed to last time. huge turnout surge. >> is the turnout surge in virginia, does it look like it's over the 2008 number in addition to being over the 2016 number? >> yeah, i've got to get the 2008 number. i don't have an immediate answer. i'm going to check. i imagine it is. >> okay, plough and gibbs. let's bring up the lights on

plough and gibbs. bring your best game. you've now been handed even more evidence. robert, as you were saying. >> to put a finer point on these virginia suburbs, white college graduates, joe biden in these early exit polls, 43. sanders 21, warren 17. he's adding a group of the electorate that he wasn't getting before. and then you see in that comparison of the 2016 to 2020 turnout numbers, sanders isn't -- he's not just not expanding the electorate. he's not holding the numbers that he was getting before. so i think there's a narrative problem that's being established for the sanders campaign in some of these early votes. and i will say this, too. if the texas numbers hold, it's a huge win for biden even if he doesn't win the state because we were talking just 72 hours ago about surviving today and surviving was finishing within 150 delegates. if he splits texas, boy, it will be champagne corks popping in

their headquarters tonight. >> david? >> well, what's interesting about the suburban numbers is joe biden can go out there tonight and tomorrow and the rest of the counter and say i have the electability case. i've driven huge turnout in the african-american community which we need to beat donald trump, i'm holding onto support of democratic women and increasing turnout. what robert said 72 hours ago, joe biden was down in his political life. he was the under dog. with an overall pledge delegate lead, if not, it's going to be close. if you look at the rest of the calendar coming up in march, states like florida, states like georgia, states like louisiana, states like missouri, biden probably now becomes the front runner again. what i'm interested is how does he wear that mantle? because that's a very different mantle than the plucky under dog who is basically down to his last political life and he's now got to perform exceedingly well in debates, in speeches, and now

his campaign's got to fully maximize this momentum in states like florida and georgia. so he exits march with a pledge delegate lead that may be of such significance it's hard to see how bernie sanders would eclipse it. >> david, can i ask you with other democratic candidates dropping out of the race, tom steyer brought a lot of his own money, he also has a really good mailing list. pete buttiegieg brought both a lot of donors and a good campaign organizing effort. amy klobuchar brought her own strengths including her own specific kind of list and -- would you expect that those campaigns that have now come to an end, whether or not the candidates have actually endorsed biden, that he'll try to grab that talent? he'll try to grab those existing structures and glom them on the small campaign apparatus he's built for himself? >> sure, biden has a good core campaign team. he needs to add to it. you have field organizers from all those candidates.

if michael bloomberg's campaign can be measured in a matter of days, they have amazing talent in that campaign, great digital talent running really a 2020 campaign. whoever the nominee is going to need. yes. and the other thing i'd say about that, those are amazing surrogates. some have endorsed biden. as you think about the general election and fresh faces to go into the battle ground states to make the case. >> i want to show the bernie sanders event in essex junction, vermont, they have a strong coordinated placard game right now. this counts for something on the trail. >> is fish playing? >> that is not fish. >> that's not fish. >> if it were fish, katy tur would be on a red eye to vermont. mike memoli is standing by covering the biden effort in los angeles. and, mike, how much of the positive news tonight are

they -- is getting into them and what's been their reaction to you guys? >> reporter: well, brian, to say the least, i can't describe how much the mood around this candidate and this campaign has changed. from three tuesdays ago on the night of the new hampshire primary, things were so dire on the day of the primary that the biden campaign pulled up stakes. they abruptly changed plans, went to south carolina to try to double down on what has long been their theory of the case. that when more diverse voters were heard from, when more diverse states had a chance to weigh in on this democratic nomination contest, biden's path would become clearer. that's been validated now over the course of -- of course, south carolina and the results we're starting to see play out across the super tuesday states, the question i think is a good one david plough asks -- >> mike, i have to -- i have to interrupt you, but you're going to want to hear this, too. nbc news is projecting the state

of oklahoma, when all the votes are counted, joe biden will have added it to his victories tonight. >> that was a bernie sanders victory in 2016, 52-42 over hillary clinton. so that's got to be a surprise to the sanders camp to lose oklahoma to joe biden. >> i'm watching all this, though, and i love mike memoli's thoughts on this, too. we all covered impeachment as if it were a parallel undertaking for the democratic primary. our feeling was it took those candidates away from running as president those who had to serve as jurors at the end of the three-month period. i wonder if they have internalized joe biden's electability. donald trump is so terrified of running against joe biden he risked his entire presidency -- he bet the farm on his whole isn't i to kill him off politically. >> enlisting a foreign country.

>> last week he asked an associate -- he's still obsessed with the work he did to try to smear joe biden. and i wonder -- we throw around electability as though it exists in a vacuum for voters. voters watched. where ever you came down as a voter on impeachment, you knew donald trump wanted to sort of soil the reputation and the family name of the bidens so desperately that he asked a foreign country to dirty him up, to do what bill barr wouldn't do, to investigate him and prosecute him. so i wonder if at some level the impeachment sort of baggage that was internalized was donald trump's trepidation about running against this guy. and i wonder if democratic voters think, well, shouldn't we sort of give another look at the guy trump is that scared of? >> i would add to that the 100% obedient ron johnson of wisconsin -- >> he's at it again. >> invoking burisma again in a letter. so, mike memoli, you've been

listening to our conversation, you heard the news. take on any or all of it. >> well, actually i was interested in i picking up where you left off, brian. around the time of the impeachment trial there was a sense, of course, that biden used it on the campaign trail, too, to say all of this energy and effort that the trump and his allies put into trying to dislodge h dislodge me as a potential foe, yes, biden had problems with his campaign in iowa, as an organization. but maybe joni earnst raised the prospect of the lawyers on the floor of the senate may have weighed on iowa voters. one of the questions going forward, when it looked like biden was not a threat, ukraine vanished from the lips of a lot of republicans. burisma was not heard from any more. there are insurance policies in the senate republican ranks of a

potential biden renaissance including, yes, ron johnson, the senator from wisconsin. there have been a number of requests put into the treasury department for any and all records related to burisma. that's a treasure trail potentially if they are turned over to republican lawmakers that will, again, bring that back. but i think it's interesting to also see how the democratic party is rallying around the former vice-president at this point. and i think about a moment last night when mayor pete buttiegieg endorsed him in texas. one of the moments i think that stand out from the perspective of team biden was the number of times mayor pete defended the vice-president when the questions around ukraine were raised. and i think you'll see a closing of the ranks around joe biden if and when the republicans try to play that again. >> mike, thanks. let's go to the other side of the country. we have potential news out of the bloomberg effort in west palm. josh lederman covering for us.

what do you have? >> brian, the bloomberg campaign started the night exuding confidence with the campaign manager telling us he would be viable in nearly every state if not every state tonight. a few hours later, the mood is very different here at bloomberg's event and with bloomberg officials that we've been speaking with. and it's worth noting that some of the very states that joe biden is now projected to win are the same states that bloomberg officials had been pointing to for weeks as the ones where they felt the most confident where they thought mike bloomberg had a chance to win, including virginia, oklahoma which was just projected. bloomberg had said he was all-in on north carolina. that one project today go to joe biden. we just now have a new statement from the bloomberg campaign manager. tonight on one-third of delegates will be allotted. as mike said, no matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible. going on to say, our number one

priority remains defeating donald trump in november. what you don't hear in that statement is any assertion that he plans to stay in the race no matter what, that he still thinks he can win. obviously the bloomberg campaign is not saying in this statement that he's dropping out or anything like that. but we are hearing a much more sober tone coming out of the super tuesday results. >> josh lederman, thank you for that news. great coverage of that from you, west palm. and the question for democrats, because the sanders camp has said, not no way, not no how do we want that man's money. if, indeed, this race goes on without mike bloomberg, does he become the biden national bank? sea and how does that work? i mean, mike bloomberg, his rejoinder and people have said, you shouldn't be spending your money, your billions on trying to buy this race. his rejoinder to that is, i've made a ton of money and i am

spending it to try to get donald trump out of the white house. is there something better you'd rather have me spend it on? democratic audiences like to hear that. the nuts and bolts of how that's going to work are going to be probably impossible if senator sanders is the nominee. he said he literally will not accept the help. that will create a dead end street for mayor bloomberg to do the work to oust the incumbent president if it's anybody other than bernie sanders. it looks like the contender is definitively going to be joe biden. that's going to be awkward. it's still going to be a difficult situation in terms of how a campaign runs alongside another juggernaut gigantic effort to try to achieve the same end. >> not really, though. >> give them a -- >> it's not like a super pac. it's a guy, bloomberg's personal money. >> structurally -- here's where all the infrastructure, as with bloomberg, you throw around words you don't use in politics. the infrastructure exists.

bloomberg has been an advocate and philanthropist around gun control. there's a lot of structure -- they've got political ad makers. they've gotten mailing lists. i'm sure the bloomberg lists around gun control are better than all the candidates combined. bloomberg also played heavy and spent heavily -- i don't know why these aren't his two biggest messages. he might have done better, around the 2018 midterms. i think he funded a ton of the democrats running in the state of virginia where a lot of the ground was made up in those midterm races where democrats had big gains that are still celebrated. i think that bloomberg as a political funder of a presidential operation has a lot of the structure. he has a lot of the talent. he has all of the money. >> does it graft with the cav pain, though? >> i think the structure is separating issues. you can be the more negative, you can do the oppo book, you can do the negative trump stuff.

but there's -- i think if anyone can sort of pull up, syncing up with a campaign, bloomberg has a lot of muscle memory. >> right. i think if you look at the structure of some of the organizations that he supported, these are people who knock on doors, make telephone calls, independent of campaigns. he would be able to put in that infrastructure. and he said he's figuring out a way to maintain his own infrastructure maybe under some other entity that can do those same things. i think the trick to your question is going to be for joe biden at this stage, not playing into the argument that he's part of a democratic establishment that's bought by corporate america. and making sure that he can also bring along those bernie sanders supporters if it comes to that on a message of unity. >> or start -- if bernie stays in the race, can he make an

appeal to peel some of them off? >> i think he can. but i think it's going to be important -- we can't lose 30% of them. and so joe biden, if he's going to be the nominee, is going to have to figure that out. >> we're going to take a break. two things to give you a heads up on. we're 34 minutes away from our next poll closings and we're minutes away from a live interview here with congressman clyburn of south carolina. so arguably the strongest single voice to date in the democratic process this time around. all of that when we come back. at verizon, being reliable means working to always be reliable. it's why we earned more awards again this year. just like last year, and the year before, and years before that. all these awards are real proof that we built a network that really works for you. the network more people rely on. now experience america's most-awarded network on the phone you love, the amazing iphone. plus, up to $650 off the latest iphone when you switch.

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we are back. here's where we stand. let's just dwell on this for a moment. the sole sanders victory thus far, and you see how the night is still young, is his home state of vermont. the others we called, especially virginia and north carolina at poll close. and let's move to the right to remind everybody what is still out there. maine, arkansas, whoa, texas too early to call. minnesota too early to call. arkansas too early to call. and colorado. look at the lineup in colorado.

how does that differ from the others? biden and sanders massachusetts, too early to call. maine too early to call. unexpected. >> those went by fast in terms of the percentage of the vote and who is in contention. steve kornacki, can i ask for your help to slow down on a couple of those? >> yes. >> i think i got this right. looking at the percentage of the vote in for these six states where it's too early to call -- >> yeah. >> -- it looks to me like the state where there is the most percentage of the vote in is colorado. >> yeah, early vote. >> colorado does a lot of vote by mail, that's why we have a lot of early vote there? >> i'm slowly working my way -- there were 400,000 votes mailed in in colorado. we think the turnout roughly speaking 600,000 turnout when all is said and down. as you work your way west you get more into early mail voting. you're seeing probably two-thirds. we'll see the final turnout

estimate. in the early vote, any time you hear early vote, pre-south carolina. pre-south carolina this is what colorado looked like. this may be what colorado ends up looking like, becomes a what-it for biden. bloomberg nearly a quarter of the vote. with a lot, 400,000 or so already in and already counted. >> and i think i'm right to say this. we saw bloomberg win in american samoa. we haven't seen him in the top two in any other states other than the pending results in colorado. >> so, we say mail-in vote 24. let's see what happens with the same day. let's see if the bloomberg number comes down. if he gets 15 heed have to be getting clobbered in the same day. let me show you another state where there was a significant amount of early vote. you remember early in the night in north carolina, we were showing you two things in those returns. the initial vote showed biden up 6 over sanders. bloomberg well over the threshold of 15%.

where does it stand with 50% of the vote in? two things happened. you can see biden opened up a 2-point lead. biden is moving up, building his lead. who is he moving up at the expense of? the expense of michael bloomberg more than anybody else. bloomberg falling down to 15%. with every new report, i've been paying close attention to this. i've seen that bloomberg share edging down, edging down. he's right at the 15% delegate viability threshold. there is an awful lot of same day vote to come in in north carolina. the trend that's being established with the same-day vote we're seeing in south carolina is tremendous movement towards joe biden probably in the last couple days, folks, making up their mind to vote for biden. and it's coming at the expense of michael bloomberg who is teetering on the brink of falling below that viability threshold. >> can i ask you about another? minnesota has a couple of unique dynamics. it's like colorado. they had a caucus last time. it's hard to say what's normal

in minnesota. until 5 minutes ago, they had their very, very, very popular home state senator in the race who made a late endorsement for joe biden. so what's happening in minnesota? >> you can see here again, there is some early voting in minnesota as well. not extensive as you have in other states. what you've got here, look at this. this is another state where the evidence suggested a week -- >> sorry to interrupt. speak of the state we were just talking about, in colorado nbc news is projecting that when all at a date certain, when all of the votes are counted. bernie sanders will finish first. please note michael bloomberg also in the frame there -- >> fascinating. >> -- 24%. so, steve, what does that tell you? >> that mail-in vote was a ton in colorado. and i think it is a question out there, the pattern we're seeing in these other states where it is a big difference developing between the same day and the mail-in. we'll go back to colorado and

put it up so you can see what i'm talking about. again, two-thirds of the vote in colorado was done long before south carolina. there just isn't a lot of room there for biden to make up ground on same day. there isn't a lot of room for bloomberg to fall. if sanders can bank that kind of lead, that kind of vote -- there are demographic factors, large hispanic population. sanders doing well with hispanic voters. the biden/bloomberg split there, you have to look at that mail-in. you have to wonder if everything had been cast today in colorado, would we have a different picture there. >> and with colorado with what you're showing, all four of the candidates are viable. and so in terms of what the delegate allegation is going to be there if warren and biden and bloomberg and sanders are getting delegates out of colorado, it will be interesting impact. >> interesting and bad news for bernie sanders because sanders gets a win. sanders gets potentially a

double digit win, he has to split the delegates four ways. think about what you're looking in the southeast. biden winning landslides. you're looking at bloomberg falling below viability thresholds. more delegates for joe biden. that story, could joe biden lead at the delegate count at the end of the night? that's why this is looking more and more possible. >> gadi schwartz is standing by live in denver now that that state has been called. gadi? >> reporter: what steve was just talking about, brian, was exactly on the mark. we saw it happening in real time. this is what it came down to. you guys were talking about the early vote. everybody got their ballots early and it was a very large turnout. but here at the county level, we saw a lot of people kunging in and they had voted for either buttigieg and they had marked amy klobuchar, but they wanted to change their ballot and they were worried whether or not their vote was going to count. some of them got the bad news if they had already mailed that ballot out, their vote was

basically gone. others were able to come in. and if they still had that ballot, if they still had it in hand and hadn't turned in, they were given a new ballot and cross it out here and fill in whoever they wanted. we talked to five or six people that were comfortable enough sharing who they were voting for. every single one of them told us they were supporting biden and it was because of the endorsements that they saw over the last few days. so there was a little bit of a bump here. again, colorado, the support for bernie sanders here has been overwhelming from 2016. he handily beat hillary clinton here. this is a fiercely independent state. more independence here than republicans or democrats. guys? >> perhaps if voting were important to our democracy, we'd be good at it. we'll get there some day. got to be able to dream. gadi schwartz, thank you. >> on colorado, if four candidates end up being viable there, that is going to be

interesting in terms of the allocation of delegates and how much benefit senator sanders gets from a win there. it should be ♪ ed while elizabeth warren's campaign has not been one of the better funded campaigns, colorado is one of the places she spent a lot of money. if it has earned her viability in that state and delegates, that's why she's staying in the race. >> we have a new characterization of arkansas. as we've been talking, too early to call, can we get that graphic up? but biden is in the lead. this is just a change in our characterization. it is what it says. we also have a new guest standing by with us. veteran south carolina democrat jim clyburn, third ranking democrat in the u.s. house of representatives. congressman, thank you very much for coming to our studios tonight. i hope you've been listening and watching because you've been the man receiving the credit among our guests here in this studio

tonight for nothing less than turning around the biden campaign and turning the map across an entire region of the country tonight to the color that's been branded biden blue. on that same weekend of your endorsement, you gave some tough love in a cnn interview to the biden forces. you said they got to straighten up things like fund-raising and infrastructure, the bones of the campaign. two questions. are you going out on the road with him? are the fixes being made to your satisfaction? >> i think so. thank you very much for having me. first of all, i thought that fund-raising was lacking and it needed to be more professionalized. and i think these wins sort of professionalized the fund-raising. within 24 hours, it looks like $10 million was raised. and i also thought that we needed to have had speech making

more feeling than just laying out policy. joe biden has a tremendous record, he has a tremendous history. he is just a good guy. and i said when i made my endorsement. i know joe, we know joe, but most importantly joe knows us. but people were not feeling it. they heard his proposals. they liked them. they want him to build on obamacare, not rip it away. so i wanted his speech making to be more feeling. then i saw that roll out of endorsements by beto, amy and pete there in texas last night. that was professionalism at its best. i don't know if i had anything to do with that, but i'm very satisfied with the way it was done. if this continues throughout this campaign, the speech making that biden is now doing, the

fund-raising that's now taking place, and the kind of roll outs, the kind of organization that i saw last night, he is going to be very successful and he will be our nominee and i really deeply feel he will be the next president of the united states. >> a whole ton of democrats, some of them national democrats as we like to call them, are watching you right now. do you have a message to your party with the results of tonight in mind? >> yes, i do. i want all of my friends, members of this party to go out and sell joe biden to people who may be wavering. this country is a great country. it does not need to be made great. our challenge, it seems to me, is to make this country's greatness accessible and affordable for all americans. joe biden has the proposals to

make health care accessible and affordable. housing accessible and affordable. education accessible and affordable. you name it, he has the proposals that people believe in. nobody is interested in getting anything for free. they want to be able to afford it and they want to have access to it. so if we get that message out, i believe we will be successful in november. >> i've got a former member of your caucus who ha'd like to gen on this, donna edwards. >> hello, my friend. my question has to do with your message. when i listen to your message endorsing joe biden, i actually heard you not just speaking to south carolina, but speaking to all of those voters across the country. and i know that you have spent a lot of time the last decade traveling around the country, every single congressional

district. tell me what you specifically are going to do and the message that you were trying to share with some of these voters who were voting today on super tuesday? >> thanks for the question. thank you for your friendship, donna. i recall when i was asked what was my intent with the endorsement. i said, i was trying to create a surge for joe biden. i knew that just to win south carolina was not good enough. he needed to win it big. and just even winning it big would not be good enough unless it was done in such a way that the people up in north carolina and virginia and people down in alabama, in tennessee . i followed up my endorsement with visits to north carolina, and then i did robocalls into tennessee, into alabama,

arkansas and north carolina. and so i feel that people got the message. i think that's all i was trying to do. getting people to not just look at platforms, but to look at the candidates, compare them. which one of these candidates demonstrate the kind of compassion, the kind of goodness. i've been telling everybody that what's on the ballot this year is not just proposals. it is the goodness of this country. people who want this country to be respected around the world, people who want this country to open up its opportunities to everybody. people who want to restore dignity into the white house. so that's what i've been saying to people. that's what they've been saying to me. people are afraid. you know, i was talking the other day.

john lewis and i met in october of 1960 when we were a part of organizing snic. i went to jail back then for trying to break down barriers. i was a little anxious about being in jail, but i was never fearful i allegation felt that sooner or later, this country would respond to my dreams and my aspirations. i don't feel that way. i am fearful of this country's future. i want all american people, not just democrats. i want republicans and independents to think about this country, where we are. think about what we're seeing from foreign countries. some of us are even afraid to travel in foreign countries t. we need to restore, respect for this country, dignity in the white house and fulfill the dreams and aspirations of the american people.

>> congressman clyburn of south carolina, a veteran of the struggle, proprietor of the greatest political fish fry in the united states, 4400 pounds of fish at the last one. no one goes home hungry. congressman, we thank you for spending time with us. >> honored to have you here tonight. >> thank you very much for having me. >> we have a change in a characterization. in the state of minnesota, too early to call. however, we have added that joe biden leads so our call is still that this state is too early to call. we have put joe biden officially in the lead ahead of bernie sanders. much to discuss. a quick break. we'll take us over the top of the next hour. our. can i help you?

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two main prizes of the night. home to 29 million americans, the great state of texas. steve kornacki, what does it all mean? >> yeah, what it means is we are starting to get same-day vote in texas in addition to the early vote. you see basically a third in right now, a little bit shy in texas. if you were watching the numbers closely early when there was more concentration of early vote here, it was sanders 29, biden 22. bloomberg was at 20 at one point. what you've seen is sanders fall off a point, biden pick up a point. bloomberg fall down under 20%. is that part of that broader story we are seeing in other states where, as the same day vote comes in, it looks markedly different than the early vote in favor of joe biden, folks deciding at the last minute to go with biden, perhaps not to go with bloomberg. it's tightening. biden within five points. we showed you dallas county earlier. we are still awaiting a tiny bit of same-day voting. we are waiting for the bulk of biden county, harris county

largest in the state. houston no same day in there yet. some opportunities when you look at how the counties have gone, they were very hostile to biden in '16. chance for biden to move in. the big picture delegate story. i know everybody wants the headline of winning texas. the big picture story is biden is netting well over 100 in the southeast. it might be a ten delegate win for sanders, or ten delegate win for biden if it's close. >> steve, thanks. we warn all our guests there may be interruptions in call, changes in language. we haven't had a party till now. we have a party. james cavvill, the only time to do it since f.d.r., he's a marine and casual fan. what is the message to democrats tonight, in your view?

first i want to offer a hand gesture to congressman clyburn. >> there we go. >> that guy literally saved the democratic party. i admire his -- just wonderful hearing from him tonight, when he talks about the use of emotion in politics. i have my students here. i really try to teach that. i think we're going to see some obviously bloomberg and warren are not long for this world. i think what we might be starting to see, i'd like someone on the panel to weigh in on this, ask sanders, let's don't drag this thing out any more than we have to. people want to get on to the general election. they want to get on to defeating donald trump. i think sanders is showing tonight, hardly any showing, the african americans almost loyal constituency, the new group, educated white women. he showed nothing. if we're going to beat donald

trump, we can't be lollygagging a a around here a lot longer. it seems the party is making a decision. you're seeing the late-breaking vote. david plough and robert gibbs and other primaries, the vote can break late and massively late. we've seen it in south carolina and seen it around the country now. so it's going to be an interesting week coming up. i think we're going to see some real shifting political dynamics out there, brian, i really do. >> james, i am imagining all of sanders nation saying in unison, and i'll paraphrase, what part of bernie sanders and what part of bernie sanders' base of support does he not understand we do, in fact, want a revolution? >> i understand that you do. you don't have a majority of the democrats that are in on your revolution. i'm sure that they will continue, but i think you're going to see a lot of people saying, why are we doing this in

to what purpose? we want to beat donald trump. i travel around the country. i speak to people. democrats are not interested in a revolution. they are interested in getting the sky out of power as fast as they possibly can. at some point, sanders ran in 2016. i think you're going to start seeing some backlash here, like come on, man, we're speaking pretty loudly and we're speaking pretty clearly. we're voters and we want to be heard. you can just feel it, you can feel it coming. the dynamic is going to change. this ball is moving fast and it's going to continue to move. i understand that they'll keep raising money. people are not going to be very happy with him after awhile. >> james, it's claire. >> hey, claire. >> when democratic candidates win for president, traditionally it has been two constituencies

that have saved the day for the democratic party. the african-american vote and the women. >> that's right. >> it looks like tonight biden is running up the margins in terms of a gender gap. >> correct. >> can you speak to that? and what bernie's weaknesses are as it relates to the women voters in the democratic party? >> as you know, senator, the reason we had tremendous african-american turnout in 2007, it was the women that made the difference. joe cunningham in charleston, colin allen in dallas, houston, and everywhere around the country. a lot of these new voters to the democratic party. we should be pretty excited to have them and they're speaking pretty clearly tonight. look at loudoun, prince william, alexandria, you saw biden doing really, really well.

the african americans and these women are constituents in our party. they have to be paid attention to. their voices and their concerns and their votes have to be accounted for and i think that's a big, big part of what we're seeing here, senator. >> sorry, james, we had a bit of a lapse. we're getting ready for the top of the next hour. we've got new data coming in every second. i guess i would ask who you see as "the voice"s of maturity who would be having uncomfortable talks at an uncomfortable time in the middle of a pitched battle? i don't know that -- i don't think that senator sanders, he really like -- played well with

others. maybe that's part of his appeal, i think he's proud of that. i think the feeling that his campaign has, they're going to have people saying, senator sanders, do you really want to do in? if the goal here is to really beat donald trump, what you're doing is counterproductive. look, you ran all the way through in 2016 primaries. you had a voice in a 2020 primaries. you carried your campaign, you raised a lot of money. our most important constituents in this party are just not for you. we have to deal with that and get on to the business of november here. are you going to be able to negotiate with him or anything like that? of course, not. they live in a world like everyone else is living in the world and they have to go forward in that world. the world they're going to live in after tonight is a different world than they lived in yesterday. that's going to happen. they don't care and it will go,

but it will be a little bit different out there right now. >> james carville, thank you for taking our questioning tonight. you're never boring. thanks. >> we're coming up on 10:00 where we are expecting additional poll closings. we are expecting a poll closing at utah at the top of the hour. >> yes, we are. that's what i was writing -- >> we're watching a number of staces too close or in some cases too close to call as in texas. we're getting to the point of the night where we have a couple states that haven't closed, utah and california. i think the picture continues to get more complex as the night gets late. obviously biden was storming the place from the very first moments of the poll closings. as the night gets deeper, the results do get complex and more

nuanced. the conversations are going to be difficult. >> joe biden has carved a path from the atlantic to the mississippi river. if you were driving in a straight line, here we are under 10 seconds to the top of the 10:00 hour eastern time. and this marks the closing of the polls in the great state of utah. we'll go there first as luck would have it, and our call for utah is that the race there is too early to call. you see the top two guys. let's back up, huge victory for biden with the polls closing. virginia ditto at polls closing. colorado just here in the last few minutes, really, went to bernie sanders. tennessee, delayed because of the tornado from last night, went to biden. alabama and the deep south went to